Joint Task Assignment and Spectrum Allocation in Heterogeneous UAV Communication Networks: A Coalition Formation Game-Theoretic Approach

Abstract

Coalition structure is an efficient networking architecture for task implementation in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks. However, both the formation of coalition and the spectrum resource for intra-coalition communication affect the reconnaissance performance. In this paper, we investigate a cooperative reconnaissance and spectrum access (CRSA) scheme for task-driven heterogeneous coalition-based UAV networks by jointly optimizing task layer and resource layer. Specifically, coalition formation game (CFG) is formulated to jointly optimize task selection and bandwidth allocation. In addition to the traditional Pareto order and selfish order, coalition expected altruistic order maximizing coalitions' utility is proposed. The CFG under the proposed order is proved to be an exact potential game (EPG). Then the existence of stable coalition partition is guaranteed with the help of Nash equilibrium (NE). We propose a joint bandwidth allocation and coalition formation (JBACF) algorithm to achieve stable coalition partition wherein an efficient gradient projection (GP) based method is applied to solve bandwidth allocation. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme and algorithms are demonstrated through in-depth numerical simulations. The results show that our proposed CRSA scheme is superior to non-joint optimization scheme. Also, the proposed order is superior to traditional Pareto order and selfish order.