Forming Coalition Sets from Directional Radios

Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks aim to exploit the vast amount of spectrum in the millimeter wave (mmWave) and Terahertz bands for more capacity. mmWave/Terahertz radios fundamentally differ from existing wireless systems in terms of directivity, propagation loss, and blockage sensitivity. As these mmWave/Terahertz directional antennas/nodes are becoming part of mainstream wireless networks, effective and efficient forming of coalitions from such nodes is of interest for the goal of increasing the sum rate of a wireless network. We design a novel heuristic framework to form sets of coalitions by categorizing directional radio nodes and distributing them into coalitions while assuring that no node is isolated, and show that polynomial-time heuristics can perform well in forming coalition sets out of directional radios.