Early Acceptance Matching Game for User Association in 5G Cellular HetNet

In this paper we examine the use of matching theory for user association in millimeter wave (mmWave)-enabled cellular heterogeneous networks (HetNets). In a mmWave system, the channel variations can be fast and unpredictable, rendering centralized user association potentially inefficient. We propose an efficient distributed matching algorithm, called early acceptance (EA), tailored for user association in 5G HetNets. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is assessed by comparing its performance with the well-known deferred acceptance (DA) matching algorithm, in which user association is delayed until the algorithm finishes. Numerical results show that the proposed EA matching algorithm reaches a near-optimal solution when compared with a centralized user association, and leads to a more power-efficient and much faster user association process when compared to the distributed DA algorithm.