Stable Matching for Wireless URLLC in Multi-Cellular, Multi-User Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on communications Vol. 68; no. 8; pp. 5228 - 5241
• Main Authors: Hosler, Tom, Schulz, Philipp, Jorswieck, Eduard A., Simsek, Meryem, Fettweis, Gerhard P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 5G mobile communication; Algorithms; Computer simulation; Connectivity; Electronic mail; Matching; multi-connectivity; Network latency; Optimization; Reliability; Reliability theory; Resource allocation; Resource management; stable matching; Wireless communication systems; Wireless communications; Wireless networks; wireless systems
• ISSN: 0090-6778; 1558-0857
• DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2020.2995150

Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) are considered as one of the key services of the upcoming fifth generation (5G) of wireless communications systems. Enabling URLLC is especially challenging due to the strict requirements in terms of latency and reliability. Multi-connectivity is a powerful approach to increase reliability. However, most of the current research is restricted to single-user scenarios, neglecting the challenges of multi-cellular, multi-user systems, i.e., interference and the competition for limited resources. In this article, we develop analytic comparisons of different connectivity approaches, showing that multi-connectivity may not always be optimal in the considered scenario. Moreover, we propose and evaluate novel resource allocation approaches based on stable matching theory to enable wireless URLLC. We extend the pure many-to-one stable matching procedure by utilizing the optimal connectivity approach for each user, optimizing the maximum number of matched resources, and providing a resource reservation mechanism for users suffering from bad channel conditions. System-level simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms baseline resource allocation approaches in outage probability by up to three orders of magnitude. Even in a highly loaded system, an outage probability in the range of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{10^{-5}} </tex-math></inline-formula> is achieved.