Penalized Approach for Wide Coverage in Gamified Participatory D2D Communication

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is a promising solution in next generation mobile networks to efficiently and inexpensively provide connectivity over a wide area. The outband and autonomous approach is advantageous among existing D2D communication schemes in terms of simple operation and no spectrum interference with cellular links. A gamified participatory D2D (GP-D2D) communication was introduced to encourage mobile users to participate in establishing autonomous D2D networks. The host users compete for their gain by providing network connectivity for client users. However, the hosts tend to compose dense distribution in the previous approach so that the network coverage becomes small. To address this problem, this paper proposes a penalty function to ensure wide coverage by encouraging host users to seek different hot spots. The feasibility of the proposed approach is confirmed via theoretical analysis and computer simulation. It is implied that an improved game-setting further enhances the merits of GP-D2D communication.