IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO.
12, JUNE 15, 2021
Many-to-Many Matching-Theory-Based Dynamic
Bandwidth Allocation for UAVs
Qixun Zhang , Member, IEEE, Haizhou Wang , Graduate Student Member, IEEE,
Zhiyong Feng , Senior Member, IEEE, and Zhu Han , Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The efficient and reliable cooperation of unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) is crucial for the UAV-enabled
Internet-of-Things (IoT) services. However, one utmost challenge
is how to effectively solve the many-to-many bandwidth alloca-
tion problem between UAVs and users (UEs) in a highly dynamic
network, where the uncertain Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) links and
the UE’s mobility can seriously impair the stability of network
topology. In this article, a task-driven dynamic multiconnectivity
matching game framework with multiple service requirements is
proposed to maximize the system throughput while ensuring the
UEs’ delay requirement. A three-layers auction-based dynamic
many-to-many full matching algorithm is proposed to achieve the
global network bandwidth resource optimization and update all
UEs’ channel access strategies. A simplified matching algorithm
is proposed to achieve the efficient local resource exchange and
the dynamic matching quota adjustment between unstable sin-
gle connectivity (SC) UEs and multiple connectivity (MC) UEs,
which can achieve the suboptimal with a lower complexity solu-
tion in contrast to the full matching algorithm. Both the full
matching and simplified matching algorithms are proved theoret-
ically to achieve the stable solutions. Simulation results show that
the system throughput of both proposed algorithms can improve
55% and 38% compared with that of the conventional many-to-
one matching, respectively. Both proposed algorithms have the
lower complexity than the conventional centralized optimization
algorithm, and the complexity of simplified matching algorithm
is only 40% of the full matching algorithm. Moreover, the UE’s
satisfaction is increased by 28% compared with the case without
considering the delay factor into the utility function.
Index Terms—Auction theory, Internet of Things (IoT), match-
ing theory, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
Manuscript received July 20, 2020; revised November 13, 2020; accepted
December 23, 2020. Date of publication January 6, 2021; date of cur-
rent version June 7, 2021. The work of Qixun Zhang, Haizhou Wang,
and Zhiyong Feng was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grant 62022020 and Grant 61941102; in part by
the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant
2020YFB1807603; and in part by the 111 Project of China under Grant
B16006. The work of Zhu Han was supported in part by NSF under
Grant EARS-1839818, Grant CNS1717454, Grant CNS-1731424, and Grant
CNS-1702850. (Corresponding author: Zhiyong Feng.)
Qixun Zhang, Haizhou Wang, and Zhiyong Feng are with the Key
Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communications Ministry of Education,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876,
China (e-mail: zhangqixun@bupt.edu.cn; wanghaizhou729@bupt.edu.cn;
fengzy@bupt.edu.cn).
Zhu Han is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004 USA, and also with the
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Kyung Hee University,
Seoul 446-701, South Korea (e-mail: zhan2@uh.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3049608
2327-4662 
c 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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9995
I. I NTRODUCTION
ECENTLY, unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) communica-
R tion has become a hot topic in wireless communication
networks [1]. Besides the UAV-assisted terrestrial commu-
nication scenario, UAVs can be deployed to support the
Internet-of-Things (IoT) services in the wild and emergency
communication scenarios, such as surveillance, aerial photog-
raphy [2], and disaster rescue [3]. Due to the flexible moving
capability, UAVs can be quickly deployed to form an emer-
gency communication network to provide the efficient and
reliable IoT services [4].
In terms of the network coverage [5] and system through-
put requirements [6], only a single UAV cannot meet the
service requirements, due to its limitations in the hardware
resources on board and the coverage areas. Working as a
group, the UAV swarm can provide the Line-of-Sight (LoS)
data links for users (UEs), which can enhance the Quality-
of-Service (QoS) as well as the network capacity [7]. In
addition, with their agility and recyclability, UAVs are cost-
effective [8]. The novel centralized and distributed algorithms
are proposed in [9] to achieve the on-demand coverage and
maintain the interconnection among UAVs at the same time.
The centralized deployment algorithm is characterized by its
low complexity with reduced discrete search space, while the
distributed algorithm enables each UAV to autonomously con-
trol its motion to realize on-demand coverage. Furthermore,
a novel low complexity centralized algorithm and a UAVs
motion control distributed algorithm are proposed in [10],
which can rapidly deploy the minimum UAVs to serve UEs
and guarantee a robust backbone network among UAVs and
fixed base stations (BSs). The UAV swarm can also be used
as sensor collector [11], mounted BSs [12], and relay trans-
mission equipment [13]. However, in order to maximize the
system throughput, the conventional UAV trajectory change
solution [14] consumes too much propulsion energy, which is
a disadvantage for the endurance of UAV swarm. Therefore,
the effective resource flow mechanism is needed to ensure
the timeliness and reliability of UAV swarm communication.
Unless the efficient and reliable bandwidth allocation problem
can be solved, the severe interuser interference, poor link
quality, packet loss, and aircraft crash will happen otherwise.
To overcome these problems, many research works
have been proposed on UAV swarm bandwidth allo-
cation in [15]–[20]. UAV swarm connection networks
are mainly considered in one-to-one or many-to-one
9996
models [15], [16], [19], [20]. For example, Nguyen et al. [15]
used the traditional convex functions and the quadratic trans-
formation approaches to optimize the UAV BS placement and
the bandwidth allocation problems to enhance the sum rate.
Besides, for delay-sensitive services, an UAV-enabled orthog-
onal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) network
is proposed to enhance the throughput performance gain in
delay-constrained communication scenarios [16]. Furthermore,
a many-to-many matching model that can configure the chan-
nel selection strategy of multiple relays is proposed in [17].
However, due to the fast-changing feature of the air-to-ground
(A2G) channel, the link currently assigned to a UE may
change from LoS link to Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) link,
where the sudden changes in the link quality will severely
affects the UE’s throughput [18]. The changes of link qual-
ity and the UE mobility will increase the dynamics of the
UAV network topology, which is difficult to adapt to the above
mentioned fixed connection quota method. Besides, traditional
static bandwidth allocation methods cannot flexibly adjust the
radio resource distributions according to the dynamic service
flow, leading to the low spectrum efficiency problem [19]. To
overcome this challenge, both dynamic evolutionary game and
noncooperative game are used to solve the Nash equilibrium
of the UAV bandwidth allocation problem in [20]. However,
this centralized approach needs to exchange the connection
information of all UEs and has high complexity. Therefore,
how to solve the matching problem between multiple differ-
entiated services and limited bandwidth resources in a highly
dynamic UAV swarm network is a key challenge.
Matching theory can minimize the complexity and over-
come the significant information exchange limitations of the
traditional game theory methods and centralized optimization
algorithms [21], [22]. The matching theory is proved to
be a useful tool in solving wireless communication prob-
lems due to its low complexity [23], fast convergence [24],
and preference interpretations [25]. Most existing works use
the stable marriage game and the many-to-one matching
game to solve resource allocation problems with bilateral
preferences [23]–[25], but only a few of them use the dis-
tributed many-to-many matching [17], [26]. Although the
many-to-many matching strategy can provide a more flexible
UE access strategy, it will bring serve interuser interference
and the communication overhead among UEs and UAV
swarms. In order to reduce the impact of NLoS links on UE’s
throughput and adapt to the dynamic changing network topol-
ogy, this article establishes a dynamic multiconnectivity UE
access model to solve the bandwidth allocation problem of
UAV swarms.
In general, existing research works mentioned the difference
between LoS and NLoS links, but they have not considered
how to update the UE’s access strategy and provide multiple
parallel transmission communication links to UEs to replace
the original NLoS links. The uncertainly of NLoS links and
the UE mobility will cause the high dynamics of the UAV
network topology, which can affect the system throughput and
network stability. Besides, most existing works on the match-
ing game only consider the bandwidth allocation scheme under
a fixed BS resource condition. But for many UAV-enabled
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021
communication scenarios, the highly dynamic network topol-
ogy will lead to the rapid change of UEs’ access strategies,
which will lack the service-aware intelligence and cause the
low spectrum efficiency. In this article, we first propose a
task-driven dynamic multiconnectivity matching game frame-
work with multiple service requirements to maximize the
system throughput while ensuring the delay requirements of
UEs. A three-layers auction-based dynamic many-to-many full
matching algorithm is proposed to achieve the global network
bandwidth resource optimization and update all UEs’ access
strategies. To further overcome the dynamics of network topol-
ogy, we propose a simplified matching algorithm (SMA) based
on the full matching result to achieve the local bandwidth
resource exchange and the dynamic matching quota adjust-
ment among unstable SC UEs and MC UEs, which can achieve
the suboptimal solution but has lower complexity than the
full matching algorithm. Both the proposed full matching and
SMAs are proved theoretically to achieve the stable solutions.
The major contributions of this article are summarized as
follows.
1) In order to solve the UAV-UE dynamic many-to-
many bandwidth allocation problem, we first propose a
dynamic multiconnectivity matching game model named
full matching to achieve the global network bandwidth
resource optimization, which only requires the linear
complexity compared with the exponential complexity
of the conventional centralized optimization. Moreover,
in order to ensure the quality of delay-sensitive services,
we take the delay satisfaction into consideration for the
UE’s matching preference.
2) In order to enhance the spectrum efficiency and system
throughput, we propose a three-layers dynamic auc-
tion architecture in full matching to coordinate the
bandwidth supply demand competition relations among
UAVs, wh ich can significantly improve the system
throughput compared to existing matching algorithms.
Further more, using the primal-dual theory, the proposed
algorithm is proved theoretically to achieve the optimal
solution.
3) Based on the full matching result, to further over-
come the network dynamics, we propose an SMA to
achieve the local resource exchange between unstable
single connectivity (SC) UEs and multiple connectiv-
ity (MC) UEs. UEs can achieve the flexible conversion
between single connection and multiple connections.
The proposed SMA can achieve the suboptimal solu-
tion with a much lower complexity than that of the full
matching algorithm.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. The
system model and the problem formulation of dynamic band-
width allocation in UAV swarm network are provided in
Section II. A dynamic multiconnectivity full matching algo-
rithm named full matching is proposed in Section III. We
analysis the stability and optimization of full matching algo-
rithm and propose the SMA, which is based on the full
matching result with a low complexity in Section IV. The
performance analysis are provided in Section V. Finally, the
conclusion remarks are drawn in Section VI.
ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs 9997

{D1 , D2 , . . . , Dm , . . . , DM }, 1 ≤ m ≤ M. The initial

Fig. 1. UAV-enabled emergency downlink communication network.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
As shown in Fig. 1, we consider a UAV-enabled emergency
downlink communication network scenario, where the UAV
arial BSs are deployed in disaster areas to provide the effi-
cient and reliable communication for UEs’ equipments. To
overcome the highly dynamics of the UAV network topology
caused by the uncertain NLoS links and the UE’s mobil-
ity, UEs can choose different matching quotas to obtain a
stable solution. UE’s typical communication services are con-
sidered including the voice calls, the news data transmission
and the real-time videos, which have various delay require-
ments and data sizes. To achieve the efficient on-demand
bandwidth resources flow, we set one UAV as the auction con-
trol center (ACC) to control the UAV dynamic auction process
(DAP). The network model and the A2G channel model are
shown in Sections II-A and II-B, respectively. To maximize
system throughput while ensuring UEs’ delay requirements,
the UE’s satisfaction utility function is defined in Section II-C.
Finally, the many-to-many bandwidth allocation problem of
UAV swarm is formulated in Section II-D.
A. Network Model
We define the UAVs’ set as U = {U1 , U2 , . . . , Un , . . . , UN },
1 ≤ n ≤ N, and UEs’ set as D
positions of UEs and UAVs are uniformly distributed at
the origin with a radius of R. In order to avoid colli-
sions as well as reduce interferences among UAV swarm,
UAVs are formed as a cluster to execute determined tasks
with low-speed periodic movement or hovering state.
We assume that UEs carry one specific emergency ser-
vice in a period of time, and these services have various
data sizes L = {l1 , l2 , . . . , lM }, 1 ≤ m ≤ M and delay
requirements T = {t1 , t2 , . . . , tm , . . . , tM }, 1 ≤ m ≤ M.
In the bandwidth allocation process, UAVs need to com-
pete with each other to strive for the limited bandwidth
resources for their potential UEs. Therefore, the bandwidth
resources of UAVs are dynamically changing as depicted by
B(t) = {B1 (t), B2 (t), . . . , B n (t), . . . , BN (t)}, 1 ≤ n ≤ N and
N
the total bandwidth B = n=1 Bn (t) is constant. Bn,m (t) is
the received bandwidth resources of Dm connecting to Un .
In the emergency communication scenario, considering the
challenge of explosive growth of UE’s service requirements,
existing bandwidth resources B are difficult to meet the
requirements of emergency communication for all UEs. In
this article, based on matching theory, we design an incentive
many-to-many framework to achieve the efficient and reliable
matching result between multiple UAVs and multiple UEs.
B. Channel Model
We consider two kinds of channel models in the UAV swarm
network, i.e., the air-to-air (A2A) channel model (including the
ACC UAV to other UAV BSs) and the air-to-ground (A2G)
downlink channel model (including UAV BSs to UEs), which
are provided by the 3GPP specifications [29].
1) Air-to-Air Channel Model: Considering the distance
between ACC UAV and other UAV BSs, the channels among
them are mainly dominated by LoS links [4]. According to
3GPP TR 36.777, the A2A channel path loss between UAV
BS Un and the ACC UAV U0 is described in (1), shown at the
bottom of the page, where wn,0 is the distance between UAV
BS Un and ACC UAV U0 , hn and h0 are the heights of UAV
BS Un and ACC UAV U0 , respectively, and f0 is the carrier
frequency of the A2A link.
2) Air-to-Ground Channel Model: According to 3GPP TR
36.777, we consider an A2G UAV-enabled downlink emer-
= gency communication network. UAV BSs can connect to UEs

 
n
PLACC = 30.9 + 22.25 − 0.5 · log10 |hn − h0 | log10 wn,0 + 20 · log10 f0 (1)

  
30.9+ 22.25 − 0.5log
 h log10 wn,m +
 20log10 fc , LoS
PLn,m = 10 (2)
max PLn,m , 32.4 + 43.2 − 7.6log10 h log10 wn,m + 20log10 fc , NLoS
LOS

⎧ 
⎪
⎨ 1, if w2n,m − h2 < w0
PLOSn,m =  √    (3)
⎪ w2 −h2
⎩√ w0
+ exp − n,m
p1 1− √ w0
, if w2n,m − h2 > w0
w2n,m −h2 w2n,m −h 2

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9998
either through LoS or NLoS links with different probabil-
ities, which depends on the height of UAVs, the distance
between UAV BSs and UEs, and the carrier frequency. We
use un (n = 1, 2, . . . , N) and wm (m = 1, 2, . . . , M) to describe
the coordinates of UAV BSs and UEs, respectively. Based
on [29], we have the path loss function, shown in (2), at
the bottom of the previous page, where wn,m = un − wm 
is the distance between UAV BS Un and UE Dm , fc is the
carrier frequency of the A2G link, and PLn,m LOS and PLNLOS
n,m
denote the PLn,m for the LoS link and NLoS link, respectively.
We also have the probability of the LoS link which stochas-
tically depends on the UEŠs location and the environment,
shown in (3), at the bottom of the previous page, where w0 =
max [294.05log10 h − 432.94, 18], p1 = 238.98log10 h − 0.95,
the range of h is 22.5 m ≤ h ≤ 300 m, and correspond-
ingly, the probability of the NLoS link can be expressed as
PNLOSn,m = 1 − PLOSn,m .
We also assume that the channel gain is mainly domi-
nated by the large-scale fading and channel variations, where
the small-scale fading is ignored [30]. We define γn,m =
P·10−PLn,m /10
Im +Ns as the received signal to interference plus noise
ratio (SINR) of Dm connecting to Un [30]. Ns is the additive
white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Im is the interference gen-
erated by the other UAV BSs, which include both LoS link
interference Im,LOS and NLoS link interference Im,NLOS . Im
can be expressed as follows based on [30]:
Im = Im,LOS + Im,NLOS
where the detailed value of Im is described in (4), shown at the
bottom of the page. The achievable transmission rate per unit
of bandwidth for a UE Dm assigned to UAV BS Un , followed
by Cn,m = log2 (1 + γn,m ), can be described as:
 
P · 10−PLn,m /10
LOS
Cn,m = log2 1 +
LOS
(6)
Im + Ns
 
−PLn,m
NLOS /10
P · 10
NLOS
Cn,m = log2 1 + (7)
Im + Ns
where (6) and (7) are the achievable rates for the LoS link and
the NLoS link.
Especially, if UE Dm connects to multiple UAV BSs (i.e.,
{Un1 , Un2 }), each link has its own SINR and achievable rate.
Without knowing the link state, we use (4)–(7) to evaluate the
performance of γn,m , Cn,mLOS , CNLOS (n = n , n ).
n,m 1 2
C. User Satisfaction Utility Function
For the UAV-enabled emergency communication network, to
meet the delay requirements of different services, we define
the UE’s satisfaction composed of the achievable throughput
Im = Im,LOS + Im,NLOS
 −PLLOS /10
= PLOSn ,m · P · 10 n ,m +
Un ∈U,n =n
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021
and delay requirement to help delay-sensitive UEs to choose
their better quality bandwidth resources.
To ensure the successful communication, if a UE would
like to join this bandwidth allocation process, its SINR needs
to satisfy γn,m > γmin , where γmin is the successful commu-
nication threshold. For the achievable throughput, the UE’s
satisfaction utility function Rn,m is the probability weighted
sum of UE’s LoS and NLoS links throughput, and Rm is
the maximum achievable throughput of Dm . Rn,m can be
expressed as
Rn,m = PLOSn,m · Cn,m
LOS
+ PNLOSn,m · Cn,m
NLOS
. (8)
As mentioned in [27], the UE’s service delay consists of two
parts: 1) the transmitting time tcomm and 2) the CPU processing
time tcomp . tcomp depends on the CPU sharing among multiple
UEs. In our bandwidth allocation problem, we focus on the
UE’s efficient bandwidth access strategy. Thus, we assume that
each UAV has a sufficient computing power, which is set to a
constant value of tc . Considering the co-channel interference
between UAVs, each UAV BS can accept at most qt service
for communication. The transmitting time tcomm depends on
the data size lm , the UE’s link bandwidth resource fm , and the
achievable throughput Rn,m . Therefore, the service delay Tn,m
can be expressed as
lm
Tn,m = tcomm + tcomp = + tc . (9)
fm · Rn,m
(5) Based on the UE’s delay requirement tm and the actual com-
munication delay Tn,m , the UE’s delay satisfaction will show
a negative exponential curve [28], which can be expressed as

1, Tn,m ≤ tm
ρn,m = 2 7 −0.3005τ (10)
9 + 9 e , Tn,m > tm
where τ = Tn,m − tm , and the service delay Tn,m is greater
than zero. In order to help delay sensitive UEs get satisfied
links while maximizing the UEs’ achievable rate, we define
the UE’s satisfaction utility function Un,m as
λ2
Un,m = λ1 · Rn,m + · ρn,m (11)
tm
where λ1 and λ2 denote the weighting factor of transmission
rate and delay satisfaction. The values of λ1 and λ2 depend
on the types of UEaŕs
˛ service demands. For delay sensitive
service such as voice and real-time video services, the increase
of λ2 can help them compete for better bandwidth resources
and improve the delay satisfaction.
D. Problem formulation
In this article, we aim to maximize the system through-
put while ensuring the UEs’ delay requirements. In order to
overcome the highly dynamics of the UAV network topology,
 −PLnNLOS
 ,m /10
PNLOSn ,m · P · 10
Un ∈U,n =n
(4)
ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs 9999

TABLE I
K EY PARAMETERS AND N OTATIONS FOR THE BANDWIDTH A LLOCATION This optimization problem in (12)–(17) is a mixed-integer
M ODEL nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem [32], which is gen-
erally NP-hard. Therefore, we proposed a low-complexity
dynamic multiconnectivity matching game framework to solve
this problem. In Section III, we try to solve this problem
by dividing it into two subproblems. In addition, based on
the results of Section III, we will discuss a lower-complexity
suboptimal solution in Section IV to further overcome the
dynamics of the UAV network topology.

III. F ULL M ATCHING : G LOBAL -O PTIMAL S OLUTION

The full matching algorithm can achieve the global network
bandwidth optimization and update the access strategies of all
UEs in two steps. In the first step, for UEs with the good LoS
link quality, a UE-optimal many-to-one algorithm is proposed
to ensure the high-speed and stable single-connectivity trans-
mission in Section III-A. In the second step, for NLoS
UEs and other unmatched UEs, we proposed a three-layers
auction-based many-to-many algorithm to realize an efficient
on-demand flow of bandwidth resources among UAVs and
UEs can adopt a dynamic matching quota connection method meet the UEs’ throughput requirements in Section III-B. The
to obtain an efficient and stable UAV communication link. second step contains two subphases: 1) the UAVs’ bandwidth
Similarly, the dynamic bandwidth competition will be used competition phase and 2) the UEs’ multiconnectivity matching
among UAVs to achieve the efficient use of limited spectrum phase.
resources. Then, we can formulate the bandwidth allocation
problem as follows: A. UE-Optimal Many-to-One Matching Algorithm
 
OPT : max kn,m · Bn,m (t) · Un,m (12) Inspired by the student project allocation (SPA)
kn,m ,Bn,m (t) Un ∈U Dm ∈D problem [31], we define the bandwidth resource alloca-
tion problem among UAVs and UEs with good LoS link
quality as a many-to-one matching game. Each resource
s.t.
allocation policy π1 determines the allocation of a subset of
kn,m · γn,m ≥ γmin ∀Un ∈ U ∀Dm ∈ D (13) UEs to each UAVs.

0≤ kn,m ≤ qt ∀Un ∈ U (14) Definition 1: Given two distinct finite sets of players U and
Un ∈U D, the resource allocation policy π1 , can be defined as a many-

0≤ kn,m ≤ qd ∀Dm ∈ D (15) to-one matching relation, π1 : U → D satisfies:
Dm ∈D
1) ∀Un ∈ U, π1 (Un ) ⊆ D, |π1 (Un )| = 1;
  2) ∀Dm ∈ D, π1 (Dn ) ⊆ U, |π1 (Dm )| < qd ;
0≤ Bn,m (t) ≤ B ∀Un ∈ U ∀Dm ∈ D 3) ∀Un ∈ U, the total unmatched bandwidth is less
Dm ∈D Un ∈U than Bn (t);
(16) 4) ∀Dm ∈ D ∀Un ∈ U, π1 (Un ) = Dm ⇔ π1 (Dm ) = Un .
kn,m ∈ {0, 1} ∀Un ∈ U ∀Dm ∈ D (17) In fact, π1 (Dm ) = Un implies that kn,m = 1; otherwise
kn,m = 0. The matching game inherently satisfies the con-
where kn,m ∈ {0, 1} is the resource indicator for UAV
strains in (14) and (15). In addition, π1 is a feasible matching,
Un and UE Dm . Here, kn,m = 1 indicates that UAV Un
if it satisfies the quota constrains, i.e., M m=1 Bn,m (t) · kn,m ≤
is assigned to UE Dm otherwise kn,m = 0. The set of
Bn (t). In order to meet the UE’s throuphput and delay require-
all kn,m ( ∀Un ∈ U ∀Dm ∈ D) forms the matching result π .
ments, the bandwidth demand of Dm can be set as dm =
Equation (12) represents the system objective, which aims
[lm /Rn,m · (tm − tc )] according to (9). To reach a stable result
to maximize the system throughput while ensuring the UEs’
π1 , the UEs’ preference lists PLUE are sorted in a descending
delay requirements. Equation (13) denotes that each UE should
order based on the UE’s satisfaction utility function Un,m . The
meet the SINR requirements. Equations (14) and (15) presents
preference relations of UEs are described as
that each UAV can share the bandwidth resources with at most
qt UEs and each UE can access at most qd preferred UAVs, Un Dm Un ⇔ Un,m ≥ Un ,m . (18)
respectively. Equation (16) indicates that the upper bound of
communication network. Equation (17) indicates the assign- Because the link throughput between UEs and UAVs are
ment relationship of each link. All the notation representations equivalent, the proposed matching algorithm is a one-side pref-
in this article are summarized in Table I. erence many-to-one matching game as shown in Algorithm 1.

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10000 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

Algorithm 1 UE-Optimal Many-to-One Matching Algorithm acceptable price of UE Dm matched with Un , which is a pre-
(UMOA) determined value of each UE and is related (11). We use the
1: Inputs: ∀Dm ∈ D, ∀Un ∈ U, Dm , B(t), T ; maximum acceptable price to characterize the degree of UE’s
2: Outputs: π1 , DUE ; demand urgency, and a high an,m means higher urgency in
3: Initializations: the spectrum demand. dn,m denotes the bandwidth demand
4: Construct the preference list of UEs PLUE ; of UE Dm matched with Un . Each UE can send at most qd
5: Construct the set of unmatched UEs DUE , set DUE = D; demand urgency pairs, which is based on the UE’s preference
6: while ∃Dm ∈ DUE : PLUE (m, :)  = ∅ and |π1 (Dm )| < qd list PLUE . The bandwidth demand dn,m is defined as
do an,m
7: for all Dm ∈ DUE do dn,m = qd dm (19)
8: Propose to the first UAV Un in its preference list n=1 an,m
PLUE (m, :); where dm is Dm  s bandwidth demands. Define B(t) =
9: Set kn,m = 1, Bn,m (t) = dm ; {bn (t)}, n = 1, 2, . . . , N as the dynamic bidding matrix, where
10: Remove Un from PLUE (m, :) and DUE ; bn (t) ∈ [0, B0 ]. bn (t) > 0 means Un can help the candidate
11: end for UEs bid for the bandwidth of the auction controller center,
12: for all Un ∈ U do otherwise bn (t) = 0. The value of the dynamic bidding matrix
13: Un keeps the most preferred qt UEs accord- adjusts with the current auction price, which can be defined as
ing to conditions 2) and 3), and rejects the
rest; bn (t) ∈ [0, B0 ], ∀n = 1, 2, . . . , N (20)
14: Add the rejected UEs into the DUE , set kn,m = 0 and N
bn (t) ≤ B0 ∀n = 1, 2, . . . , N. (21)
Bn,m (t) = 0;
n=1
15: end for
16: end while Define rn,m as the UEs layer’s received bandwidth resources,
where rn,m ∈ [0, B0 ]. rn,m > 0 means that Dm actually
obtained bandwidth resources through Un , while rn,m = 0
means a failure in the bid. Define R = {rn }, n = 1, 2, . . . , N
as the UAVs layer’s bandwidth allocation matrix, where rn =

B. Auction-Based UAV Swarm Many-to-Many Matching N
m=1 rn,m ∈ [0, Bn ]. rn > 0 means Un actually obtained band-
Algorithm width resources rn through the DAP, while rn = 0 means a
In Algorithm 1, UEs with the better channel quality have failure in the bid. When the auction process is stable, rn = Bn  .
been matched with their preferred UAV BSs. However, the The bandwidth allocation matrix is defined as
uncertainly of NLoS links and the UE mobility will cause the
high dynamics of UAV network topology. This problem will rn ∈ [0, B0 ] ∀n = 1, 2, . . . , N (22)
affect the system throughput and network stability. Therefore, N
rn ≤ B0 ∀n = 1, 2, . . . , N. (23)
these NLoS link UEs need to find new A2G communication
n=1
links. At the same time, there are some unmatched UEs and
unmatched UAVsaŕ ˛ bandwidth resources in the network. In To ensure a healthy competition in the auction process, we
order to maximize the spectrum efficiency and meet the UEs’ design the utility functions of the UAV BSs layer UnN (t), and
service requirements, we propose an auction-based many-to- the ACC layer U C (t), respectively. When UAV BS Un helps
many matching algorithm (AMMA), including both the DAP UE Dm bid for the bandwidth resource, the utility function of
N =a
and the many-to-many matching process to establish an effi- UAV-UE link is defined as Un,m n,m − p, where p denotes
cient and stable matching mechanism for UEs and UAV BSs. the current auction price. Only m (t) UEs with the maximum
The proposed algorithm is shown in Algorithm 2. acceptable price of an,m > p are eligible to participate in this

auction. The Un s current bandwidth demand is updated to
1) Auction Model: We first model the bandwidth auction m (t)
subproblem as a linear programming problem. Then, in order bn (t) = m=1 dn,m . Therefore, the utility function of UAV
to enhance the spectrum efficiency and system throughput, we BS side Un is defined as
propose a three-layers DAP illustrated in Algorithm 2 to coor-  (t)  (t)

m 
m
 
dinate the bandwidth supply-demand competition relations UnN (t) = N
Un,m · dn,m = an,m − p · dn,m . (24)
among UAVs. m=1 m=1
The three layers contain UEs layer, UAVs layer, and the Similarly, the utility function of the ACC side can be
ACC layer. Before the auction process, UEs connected by expressed as
NLoS links need to return the current matching resources.
Both NLoS UEs and unmatched UEs form the multiconnectiv- 
N
 
ity UE set DUE , and the total number is Mf . All the remaining U C (t) = p − pbase,n · bn (t) (25)
bandwidth resources, named B0 , are put together and delivered n=1
to the ACC for the unified deployment. where pbase,n denotes the cost of UAV BS Un providing the
In the auction process, we define (an,m , dn,m ) pair as a unit bandwidth resource for UE. Considering that the energy
demand urgency pair, where an,m denotes the maximum of each UAV is limited, if the energy cost does not bring in the

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ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs
throughput increase, this bandwidth access process should be
banned. Only when p − pbase,n > 0, UAV BS Un provides the
bandwidth resources with UEs, and therefore we use pbase,n as
the minimum bidding price for UAV BS Un . It is also notic-
ing that an,m > pbase,n is satisfied for each Un and Dm in the
bidding process. Formally, we can write the social income R as

M 
qd
 
R= an,m − pbase,n · rn,m .
m=1 n=1
Therefore, the optimal solution to the UAV swarm band-
width allocation problem refers to a bandwidth allocation
solution that maximizes the social welfare R, which can be
expressed as a linear programming problem

M 
qd
 
max R = an,m − pbase,n · rn,m
m=1 n=1
s.t. ⎧
∈ M ∀n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , qd }
⎨ rn,m ≤ dn,m ∀m 
M qd
⎩ m=1 n=1 rn,m ≤ B0 (28)
rn,m ≥ 0 ∀m ∈ M ∀n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , qd }.
However, as for traditional centralized algorithms, the ACC
need to know the complete information of the system and
its complexity is high. In this article, we propose a low-
complexity DAP to solve this bandwidth allocation problem,
where the ACC only needs to know the bidding requests from
UAV BSs instead of the exact bidding prices of all UEs’
channel links.
The main idea of this mechanism is that the UAV BSs help
their potential UEs to get the bandwidth resources from the
ACC. First, UEs submit the demand urgency pairs (an,m , dn,m )
to their preferred UAV BSs. Then, based on the current auc-
tion price p, each UAV BS updates its dynamic bidding matrix
B(t) and utility function UnN (t)
according to (24). The deal
price p∗ is determined until | N n=1 bn (t) − B0 | < θ , where
θ = max{dn,m }. The rest of the resources is distributed
to B(t) randomly. Finally, the bandwidth allocation matrix
denotes the final bidding matrix B. For the ACC, in order
to improve the efficiency of finding the deal price p∗ , we
propose the “quick-slow combination” mechanism by dynam-
ically adjusting the value of step length ε. The mathematical
description of this mechanism is shown in Algorithm 2 Stage
I.
M If the
qACC is not finally demanded in full at first, i.e.,
n=1 n,m (0) < B0 , for each Un we set p = pbase,n .
d
m=1 b each UAV BS accepts/rejects the UE’s access requests.
The advantages of the DAP are summarized as follows. First,
the auction is controlled by the ACC, and UAV BSs only
need to decide their own bandwidth bidding resource based
on p, which enhances the intelligence of the DAP. Second,
as bidders, UAV BSs do not need to exchange information
with each other, which improves the efficiency of the DAP.
The proposed algorithm is proved theoretically to achieve the
optimal solution in the Appendix.
2) Auction-Based Many-to-Many Algorithm: The access
selection problem between UEs DUE and UAV BSs U is
formed as a many-to-many matching game. We split each
service into multiple subpackets for parallel transmission, and
UEs can access at most qd UAV BSs. For each UAV BS
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10001
with the remaining bandwidth resources, it can still satisfy
at most qt UEs to access simultaneously. The matching result
can be denoted by the matching pairs π2 (U, DUE ). Similar
to Section III-A, we define the matching game as a pairwise
stable matching with the following definitions.
Definition 2: Given two disjoint sets DUE and U, a many-
to-many matching π2 is defined as a function from the set
(26) DUE ∪ U such that:
1) ∀Dm ∈ DUE , π2 (Dm ) ⊂ U and ∀Un ∈ U, π2 (Un ) ⊂
DUE ;
2) ∀Dm ∈ DUE , |π2 (Dm )| ≤ qd ;
3) ∀Un ∈ U, |π2 (Un )| ≤ qt ;
4) ∀Un ∈ U, the total unmatched bandwidth is less
than rn ;
5) ∀Dm ∈ DUE ∀Un ∈ U, π2 (Un ) = Dm ⇔ π2 (Dm ) = Un
(27) where π2 (Un ) (π2 (Dm )) is the set of player Un ’s (Dm  s)
partners under the matching π2 . Condition 1) describes that
UEs and UAV BSs are matched with partners in the set U
and DUE . Conditions 2) and 3) set the quota constraints of
each UE and UAV BS, respectively, corresponding to (14)
and (15). Condition 4) sets the total bandwidth constraints
of each UAV BS. Condition 5) implies that implies that
the establishment of a matching relationship is successful if
and only if π2 (Un ) = Dm and π2 (Dm ) = Un . The expres-
sions of the utility function and preference lists are similar
to Section III-A, so the detailed descriptions are omitted for
convenience.
Based on the formulated utility functions Un,m , we pro-
pose a three-phased many-to-many matching algorithm in
Algorithm 2 Stage II. In the initialization process, both the
UEs’ preference lists PLUE and the UAV BSs’ preference lists
PLUAV are sorted in a descending order based on the utility
function Un,m . After initialization, a three-phased algorithm is
performed as follows.
1) Each unmatched UE Dm sends access requests to its
qd preferred UAV BSs and cleared these indices from
PLUE .
2) Each UAV BS Un accepts at most qt access requests with
remaining bandwidth resources and refuse other access
requests.
3) If Dm  s quota is not achieved to qd , it sends the next qd −
|π2 (Dm )| requests to its preferred UAV BSs and cleared
these indices from PLUE . The same as the second phase,
These phase will repeat until there are no UEs being
rejected any more. Finally, the pairwise-stable matching
pairs π2 is achieved.
The full matching result is achieved as π0 = π1 ∪ π2 .
Compared with the conventional many-to-one matching algo-
rithm [25], the proposed many-to-many algorithm has the
following advantages. First, by splitting services into multiple
subpackets, the proposed algorithm can increase the spectrum
efficiency and the UE’s matching ratio. Second, UEs can uti-
lize other good links to complete the transmission task of the
deteriorate link which becomes the NLoS link again, improv-
ing the stability of communication between UE and UAV BS
and the UE’s delay satisfaction.
10002 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

Algorithm 2 Auction-Based UAV Swarm Many-to-Many A. Stability of Full Matching

Matching Algorithm (AMMA)
The full matching algorithm includes UMOA and AMMA.
1: Inputs: ∀Dm ∈ DUE , ∀Un ∈ U, B(t), B0 , T , qd ;
Through Theorems 1 and 2, we can prove that the full match-
2: Output: π2 ;
ing algorithm can obtain the stable results under the current
3: Initialization: Obtain preference lists of all players PLUE ,
network topology.
PLUAV ; Theorem 1: The many-to-one matching game based on
4: Stage I: Dynamic Auction Process (DAP)   Algorithm 1 is group stability.
5: UEs submit the demand urgency pairs an,m , dn,m to their
Proof: Let π1 (U, D) denotes the set of final matching
preferred UAV BSs; pairs, and π1 (Un∗ , Dm∗ ) denotes the subset of π1 (U, D), where
6: Each UAV BS develops initial bidding matrix B(0) based
Dm∗ is proposed to Un∗ . Assume a matching pair (Un , Dm ) ⊂
on (19)-(21);
 N  π1 (D, U), which exits both the relationship Un Dm* Un* and
 
7: while  bn (t) − B0  ≥ θ do Dm Un* Dm* , we define this matching pair (Un , Dm ) as the
 Nn=1   N  unstable group. If and only if no unstable group assists, the
  proposed many-to-one matching algorithm is group stability.
8: if bn (t) − B0 · bn (t − 1) − B0 > 0 then
n=1 n=1 Observing from Algorithm 1, the preference list of π1 is
9: set p = p + ε, update B(t) and UnN (t) based on (24); strictly monotone and our matching pairs selecting method
10: else always follows to the maximum utility value principle.
11: set ε = −0.5ε and p = p + ε, update B(t) and UnN (t) Therefore, under the situation of a stable community, the
based on (24); unstable group cannot exist and the Algorithm 1 is group
12: end if stability.
13: end while Theorem 2: The many-to-many matching game based on
14: R = B(t), and the ACC allocate bandwidth resources to Algorithm 2 is pairwise stable.
UAV BS; Proof: Assume a unstable pair (Un , Dm ), Un ∈ / π2 (Dm ),
15: Stage II: UAV-enabled Many-to-Many Matching Dm ∈ / π2 (Un ), which satisfies 1) ∃Un∗ ∈ π2 (Dm ) : Un,m >
16: while ∃Dm ∈ DUE :PLUE (m, :) = ∅ and |π2 (Dm )| < qd Un∗ ,m and 2) ∃Dm∗ ∈ π2 (Un ) : Un,m > Un,m∗ . Only the
do following two cases can occur according to Algorithm 2.
17: for all Dm ∈ DUE do 1) Dm has never proposed to Un . It means that the utility
18: Propose to the qd − |π2 (Dm )| preferred UAV BSs in Un,m is less than the utility of any other matching pairs
its preference list PLUE ; in π2 (Dm ), which contradicts the condition 1). Thus,
19: Set kn,m = 1, Bn,m (t) = dn,m for there preferred UAV (Un , Dm ) can not be a blocking pair (BP).
BSs; 2) Dm has proposed to Un but was finally rejected. It means
20: Remove preferred UAV BSs from PLUE (m, :) and that Un preferred other UEs including Dm∗ to estab-
DUE ; lish the potential matching pairs, which contradicts the
21: end for condition 2). Thus, (Un , Dm ) can not be a BP.
22: for all Un ∈ U do According to Algorithm 2, both the UEs and UAV BSs are
23: Un keeps the most preferred qt UEs according always interested in the utility they can achieve from the oppo-
to conditions 3), 4) and PLUAV , and rejects the site set. Therefore, when no unstable pair (Un , Dm ) exists,
rest; the resulting matching π2 * can achieves the pairwise stable
24: Add the rejected UEs into the DUE , set kn,m = 0 and solution.
Bn,m (t) = 0;
25: end for
B. Simplified Matching Algorithm
26: end while
As discussed in Section II, the dynamics of the UAV
network topology continues to affect the UE’s link quality and
matching preferences, which will cause the UE’s local BS han-
dover and affects the stability of the full matching. To solve
this problem, we propose an SMA based on the full matching
IV. C ONVERGENCE A NALYSIS AND S IMPLIFIED result to achieve the local bandwidth resource exchange and
M ATCHING the dynamic matching quota adjustment among MSC unstable
In this section, we first discuss the stability of the proposed SC UEs and Mf MC UEs as illustrated in Algorithm 3. We
full matching algorithm, which is expressed in Section IV-A. define the BP for the matching problems in Definition 3.
Considering the UE mobility and the uncertain NLoS links Definition 3: A BP for the matching problems: A UE-UE
in the UAV swarm network, some UEs’ preference lists are pair (Di , Dj ) is defined as a BP, if both Di  s and Dj  s sat-
affected by dynamic network topology and will cause band- isfaction utility values are better off after exchanging their
width resource exchanges. To overcome this problem, an SMA partners.
is proposed in Section IV-B which can achieve the subopti- In Algorithm 3, we transform the current full matching
mal with a lower complexity solution in contrast to the full π0 into π3 . We define π0 (Di ) = {Up |kp,i = 1}, π0 (Dj ) =
matching algorithm. {Uq |kq,j = 1}. The utility value of Di is represented as

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ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs 10003


U(Di ) = rp,i · Up,i , and U(Di ) = U(Di ) − C(Di ), where Algorithm 3 SMA
{Up } 1: Inputs: Existing matching π0 ; related preference lists
U(Di ) is the utility value after exchanging UAV bandwidth PLUE ;
resources with Dj , and C(Di ) is the UE’s current throughput. 2: Output: Stable matching π3 ;
For all Di , Dj ∈ D, the optimal BP is defined in 3: Initialization: πt = π0 ;
 ∗     4: Build the unstable (SC Di , MC Dj ) UE pairs matrix BP1 ;
Di , Dj ∗ = arg max U(Di ) + U Dj (29)
(Di ,Dj ) 5: Build the unstable (SC Di , SC Dj ) UE pairs matrix BP2 ;
6: while ∀p1 ∈ BP1 ≤ 0 and ∀p2 ∈ BP2 ≤ 0 do
where the UE pair (Di , Dj ) is allowed to exchange partners.
7: for all (Di , Dj ) ∈ BP1 do
The convergence of simplified matching is guaranteed by the
8: if ∃(D
 i , Dj ) ∈ BP1 , U(Di ) + U(Dj ) > 0 then
irreversibility of each exchange.
9: Di , Dj are allowed to exchange partners;
The basic idea is described as follows: First, we search
10: else
 
all the unstable SC UEs and MC UEs which have the
11: Di , Dj are not allowed to exchange partners;
exchange incentive from the current matching and build the
12: end if
(SC, MC) matrix BP1 and the (SC, SC) matrix BP2 , respec-
13: end for
tively. Second, we find the greatest utility value improvements
14: for all (Di , Dj ) ∈ BP2 do
in the two matrix, exchange their partners, and update the
15: if ∃(D
 i , Dj ) ∈ BP2 , U(Di ) + U(Dj ) > 0 then
current matching. Third, keep searching all BPs until the ele-
16: Di , Dj are allowed to exchange partners;
ments in the two matrix have no positive numbers. Through
17: else
 
Theorem 3 we can prove that the simplified matching can get
18: Di , Dj are not allowed to exchange partners;
a stable solution under the current network topology.
19: end if
Theorem 3: The simplified matching game based on
20: end for  
Algorithm 3 can get a stable solution.
21: Find the optimal BP Di ∗ , Dj ∗ in BP1 and BP2 ;
Proof: Let π3 (U, D) denotes the set of final simpli-
22: Di ∗ and Dj ∗ exchange partners;
fied matching pairs, and π3 (Un∗ , Dm∗ ) denotes the subset
23: πt ← πt /{(Di ∗ , πt (Di ∗ )), (Dj ∗ , πt (Dj ∗ ))};
of π3 (U, D), where Dm∗ is proposed to Un∗ . The matching
24: πt ← πt ∪ {(Di ∗ , πt (Dj ∗ )), (Dj ∗ , πt (Di ∗ ))};
pair (Un , Dm ) ⊂ π3 (D, U) which satisfies the relationship
25: Update BPt1 and BPt2 based on πt ;
Un Dm* Un* and Dm Un* Dm* is defined as the unstable pairs.
26: end while
(Un , Dm ) exists if and only if (Un , Dm ) ⊂ π3 (D, U) is a BP,
27: π3 = πt .
which cannot be appeared in Algorithm 3. Therefore, the sim-
plified matching game based on Algorithm 3 can get a stable
solution. TABLE II
C OMPLEXITY C OMPARISON A MONG A LGORITHMS

V. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
A. Complexity Analysis of Proposed Algorithms
The complexity of our proposed full matching algorithm is
described in two aspects. As shown in Section III-A, the com-
plexity of Algorithm 1 is O(M · N), where M · N indicates the
total length of all players’ preference lists. In Section III-B,
since each UAV BS needs to traverse the maximum accep-
tance price of the attached UEs each time, the complexity of
DAP is Na · O(qd · Mf ), where Na is the convergence itera-
tions of DAP and qd · Mf indicates the maximum number of
UAV’s received maximum acceptance price. Because the UEs
are randomly scattered, the actual number is very small. The
complexity of the UAV-enabled many-to-many matching algo-
rithm is O(Mf · N), where Mf · N indicates the total length of
the unmatched UEs’ preference lists. Regarding the SMA, the
complexity of finding all the BPs requires the traverse of all
unstable SC UEs’ and MC UEs’ preference lists, which is
bounded by (Mf + MSC ) · N. Since the swap in the proposed
simplified matching is irreversible, and each two UEs can only
swap partners only once, the total iterations of BP swaps are
bounded by (Mf + MSC ) · MSC . Thus, the complexity of our
proposed SMA is O((Mf + MSC )2 · MSC · N). In addition, we
compare the complexity of our proposed algorithms with ran-
dom access method, many-to-one matching O(M · N) [25],
and the alternative convex optimization O(2M·N ) [15]. The
complexity comparison results among different algorithms are
shown in Table II.
Communication overhead is a big concern in the system
design w.r.t. both cost and time efficiency, which requires
the information exchange through end-to-end communications.
Thus, measuring the number of new successful handover links
between (Un , Dm ) pairs during the whole matching process
is a reasonable measurement of the complexity cost for our
proposed algorithms. The actual computation cost of the SMA
is not necessarily as high as the theoretical analysis. More
details are discussed in Section V-B Figs. 5 and 6.
B. Simulation Results
The performance of the proposed full matching algorithm
and SMA are evaluated by comparing with the alternative con-
vex optimization [15], the many-to-one algorithm [25], the
maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (max-SINR)

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10004 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

algorithm [36], the maximum signal strength indicator (max-

RSSI) algorithm [37], and random access method in terms of
the performances of throughput, delay satisfaction, NLoS links
numbers, matching ratio, and handover successful ratio. The
convergence speed of DAP in full matching algorithm is also
evaluated.
We consider a circle UAV-enabled emergency communi-
cation network with a radius of r = 200 m, consisting of
M = [30, 300] UEs and N = 20 UAV BSs. All the UAV
BSs are assumed to fly at height h = 50 m. Both UAV
BSs and UEs are uniformly distributed within this circle. The
delay requirements of the voice calls, the news data trans-
mission and the real-time videos are set as 35, 150, and 100
ms, respectively, [35]. The carrier frequency of each UAV
BS is 2 GHz and each UAV BS carries 20 MHz bandwidth
resources initially [29]. Assume that the vehicle speed limit
Fig. 2. Comparison of system throughput among UEs with different
in this area is 15 m/s, and the update interval of location requirements.
interaction among UEs is 1 s, and there are three states for
the moving speed of each UE, which is 15 m/s, 7.5 m/s (rid-
ing bicycle) and 1.5 m/s (walking) [24]. We set two types
of moving scenario for UEs. Scenario 1 is the normal moving
scenario, where the probability of three states are 0.1, 0.4, 0.5.
Scenario 2 is the fast moving scenario, where the probability
of three states are 0.5, 0.4, 0.1. According to the delay sensi-
tivity of different services, we set λ2 as a random number
ranging [0, 0.1] and set λ1 to the constant 1. The trans-
mit power P of each UAV BS is 5 W and the Gaussian
noise with power is N = 10−9 W for the communication
network.
Fig. 2 shows the system throughput among different num-
bers of UEs. Results denote that compared with the con-
vex optimization algorithm, the system throughput is similar
with the full matching algorithm. The system throughput
of the proposed full matching and SMAs can be improved (a)
by 55% and 38% compared with that of the conven-
tional many-to-one matching algorithm, respectively. Both
the max-RSSI algorithm and the max-SINR algorithm per-
form worse than the conventional many-to-one matching
algorithm because they only consider the path loss between
UAV BS to UE and the UEs received SINR, which is
not suitable in the highly dynamic UAV swarm network.
Furthermore, the max-RSSI algorithm performs worse than
the max-SINR algorithm because the interuser interference
has a greater influence than the path loss in sub-6GHz
network.
Fig. 3 presents the results of system throughput among 20
UAVs and 300 UEs. Horizontal coordinate indicates the UE’s
location iteration process per 10 ms. Results show that if UE
doesn’t update its resource matching pairs, as the UE contin-
ues to move randomly, the system throughput will continue
(b)
to decreased. Fig. 3(a) shows that under the normal moving
scenario, the system throughput of two proposed algorithms Fig. 3. System throughput among 20 UAVs and 300 UEs. (a) Scenario 1:
performs very similar and both can exceed the performance normal moving scenario. (b) Scenario 2: fast moving scenario.
of conventional many-to-one matching algorithm. Fig. 3(b)
shows that although the system throughput of the SMA is
lower than the full matching algorithm, the system through- Fig. 4 denotes the comparison of delay satisfaction among
put is not greatly affected by the dynamics of the network UEs with different requirements. After considering the delay
topology. factor into the UE’s utility function, the UE’s average

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ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs 10005

Fig. 4. Comparison of delay satisfaction among UEs with different Fig. 6. Evolution results of algorithm iterations among 20 UAVs with 300
requirements. UEs.

(a)
Fig. 5. Comparison of matching ratio and successful handover ratio among
UEs with different requirements.

delay satisfaction has increased by 40%, and the index

of full matching algorithm performs better than conven-
tional many-to-one matching. As a suboptimal solution, the
UE’s delay satisfaction after using the SMA has increased
by 20%.
Fig. 5 presents the matching ratio and the successful han-
dover ratio among UEs with different requirements. First,
compared with the conventional many-to-one matching algo-
rithm, the full matching algorithm solution can serve more
UEs with the same total bandwidth resources. Furthermore,
(b)
the successful handover ratio of the SMA is only 40%
of the full matching algorithm, which indicates that the Fig. 7. Results of NLoS link number among 20 UAVs and 300 UEs.
SMA has less communication overhead than the full match- (a) Scenario 1: normal moving scenario. (b) Scenario 2: fast moving scenario.
ing algorithm according to Section V-A. Compared with
the simplified matching, the full matching algorithm can
obtain higher system throughput but the complexity is higher. throughput but also adapt to dynamics of the UAV network
Correspondingly, the simplfied matching can better adapt to topology.
the dynamics of the UAV network topology, but cannot allo- Fig. 6 shows the performance of algorithm iterations.
cate resources to UEs newly joining or leaving the network. Although the iterations of the full matching algorithm are
Therefore, new pattern that alternates between full matching slightly higher than the conventional many-to-one match-
and simplified matching can not only enhance the system ing algorithm, it can achieve the global network bandwidth

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10006
(a)
(b)
Fig. 8. Evolution results of DAP among 20 UAVs with 300 UEs. (a) Auction
price variation. (b) Total bandwidth bidding variation.
resource optimization and update all UEsaŕ ˛ channel access
strategies, which is shown in Fig. 2. The iterations of the SMA
are much lower than the full matching algorithm. Both Figs. 5
and 6 show that the SMA has lower algorithm complexity, so it
can better adapt to the dynamics of the UAV network topology.
The results of NLoS links number among 20 UAVs and 300
UEs are illustrated in Fig. 7. Fig. 7(a) shows that under the nor-
mal moving scenario, the NLoS links number of two proposed
algorithms performs much better than the conventional many-
to-one matching algorithm. No NLoS link appears in the full
matching algorithm. The SMA performs suboptimal, which
remains about 15 NLoS links. From Fig. 7(b), we can find that
although the NLoS links number of SMA slight increases, it
is not greatly affected by the dynamics of the UAV network
topology. In contrast, if UE doesn’t update its resource match-
ing pairs, the NLoS link number will continue to increase.
The NLoS links numbers in both max-RSSI and max-SINR
algorithms are higher than that in the many-to-one matching
algorithm because they cannot control the appearance of the
uncertain NLoS links, which can seriously impair the stabil-
ity of network topology.In general, both proposed algorithms
can greatly reduce UEs’ NLoS links numbers and improve
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021
the robustness of the UAV-enabled emergency communication
network.
As can be seen from Fig. 8, the convergence speed
performance is shown among different initial auction price.
Fig. 8(a) shows that as the number of iterations increases, the
current price of the auction gradually stabilizes, and quickly
converges to the final price of theoretical analysis, which is
indicated by a blue dotted line. Fig. 8(b) shows the changes
of the total bandwidth demand of the UAV swarm network
under current auction price. In general, we can find that no
matter how much the auction price starts, the DAP can quickly
converge to the optimal value of theoretical analysis.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this work, we have studied the efficient many-to-many
bandwidth allocation problem between UAVs and UEs in a
highly dynamic UAV swarm network. A task-driven dynamic
multiconnectivity matching game framework with multiple
service requirements is proposed to maximize the system
throughput while ensuring the UEs’ delay requirement. A
three-layers auction-based dynamic many-to-many full match-
ing algorithm is proposed to achieve the global network
bandwidth resource optimization and update all UEs’ chan-
nel access strategies. To further overcome the dynamics of the
UAV network topology, we have proposed an SMA to achieve
the local resource exchange and the dynamic matching quota
adjustment between unstable SC UEs and MC UEs, which can
achieve the suboptimal with a lower complexity in contrast to
the full matching algorithm. Simulation results have shown
that our proposed algorithms can achieve the low complexity,
and the close-to-optimal system throughput compared with the
conventional many-to-one matching algorithm and alternative
convex optimization algorithm, respectively.
A PPENDIX
We use the duality theory of linear programming to prove
the optimality of DAP. After transforming the primal problem
to the dual problem, we use complementary slackness theorem
to transform this optimization problem into solving a set of
constraints. The primal problem can get an optimal solution if
and only if the corresponding inequalities in the dual problem
are satisfied. The problem is proved in two steps: First, we
prove that the optimal bandwidth assignment S exists if it
satisfies the complementary slackness conditions in the primal-
dual method. Second, we prove that the bandwidth assignment
of DAP satisfies the complementary slackness conditions.
Step 1: The dual form of the problem equations in (27)
and (28) can be expressed as

M 
qd
min Q = dn,m · αn,m + B0 · β (30)
m=1 n=1
s.t.

αn,m + β ≥ an,m − pbase,n ∀m ∈ M ∀n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , qd },
(31)
αn,m ≥ 0, β ≥ 0 ∀m ∈ M ∀n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , qd }
where αn,m and β are the dual variables corresponding to
each assignment (n, m) and the ACC, respectively. We define
ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs 10007

θn,m as the slacks for each assignment (n, m), and θn,m = completed. To achieve this goal, we need to identify the dual
αn,m + β − sn,m where sn,m = an,m − pbase,n is the social profit variables for UEs and ACC, which can be expressed as
of an assignment (n, m). The dual variables and slacks must  +
αn,m = an,m − pbase,n (34)
be nonnegative in the dual problem, i.e., αn,m , β, θn,m ∀m ∈
M ∀n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , qd }. Let T be a feasible assignment matrix β = p − pbase,n (35)
for the primal problem. For each assignment (n, m), T has a where [x]+ = x if x ≥ 0 and [x]+ = 0 if x < 0. In fact, αn,m
maximal social income if the following conditions hold: in (34) is the unit profit of UE Dm and β in (26) is the unit
1) αn,m ≥ 0, β ≥ 0, θn,m ≥ 0; profit of the ACC. For simplicity, we define n,m = an,m − p.
2) θn,m = 0, if if (n, m) is an assignment in T (i.e., 0 < Thus, the slacks for each assignment (n, m) can be written as
θn,m ≤ dn,m );  +    
3) αn,m = 0, if (n, m) is not assigned in T, and θn,m = n,m + p − pbase,n − an,m − pbase,n
 +  
β
M=  0, if the ACC is not demanded in full, i.e., = n,m − an,m − p .
qd
m=1 n=1 rn,m < B0 . (36)
The conditions in 1)–3) are the complementary slackness con-
ditions in the primal-dual method. Let T = {rn,m }M×qd be First, we prove the validity of condition 1).
any feasible assignment matrix. On one hand, we can write From (34) and (35) we can see that αn,m ≥ 0, β ≥ 0,
the social income of T , denoted by S(T ) as for ∀m ∈ M ∀n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , qd }. If n,m ≥ 0, we have
θn,m = n,m − (an,m − p) = 0, and if n,m < 0, which means
   M 
qd
S T = sn,m · rn,m an,m − p < 0 for (n, m), we have θn,m = 0 − (an,m − p) > 0.
m=1 n=1 Then, we prove the validity of condition 2). If (n, m)

M 
qd is an assignment in T, it means an,m − p ≥ 0 and
  
= αn,m + β − θn,m · rn,m θn,m = n,m − (an,m − p) = 0. Next, we prove the
m=1 n=1 validity of condition 3). On one hand, if (n, m) is not

M 
qd assigned in T, the strategy should quit during the auction
  
≤ αn,m + β · rn,m process, which means an,m − p < 0. Otherwise, (n, m) will be
m=1 n=1 choosed by the ACC with a positive bidding profit. Thus, we

M 
qd have n,m < 0 and αn,m = [ n,m ]+ = 0. On the other hand,
≤ dn,m · αn,m + B0 · β if the total bandwidth bidding is less than ACC’s bandwidth
m=1 n=1 resources at first, for each Un we have β = p − pbase,n = 0.
(32) Therefore, we have proved that our proposed DAP solution
satisfies the complementary slackness conditions and is the
where θn,m ≥ 0, as specified in  condition
qd1). The last line optimal solution. From steps 1 and 2, we can complete the
follows because rn,m ≤ dn,m and M m=1 n=1 r n,m ≤ B0 . On proof straightforward.
the other hand, we can write the social income of T, denoted
by S(T), as
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access selection and resource allocation in UAV assisted IoT communi- Qixun Zhang (Member, IEEE) received the B.Eng.
cation networks,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1663–1674, degree in communication engineering and the Ph.D.
Apr. 2019. degree in circuit and system from Beijing University
[21] Y. Gu, W. Saad, M. Bennis, M. Debbah, and Z. Han, “Matching the- of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing,
ory for future wireless networks: Fundamentals and applications,” IEEE China, in 2006 and 2011, respectively.
Commun. Mag., vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 52–59, May 2015. From March to June 2006, he was a Visiting
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wireless communications,” IEEE Signal Process. Mag., vol. 33, no. 6, Park, MD, USA. From November 2018 to November
pp. 103–122, Nov. 2016. 2019, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Electrical
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complexity matching game approach for LTE-unlicensed,” in Proc. IEEE of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. He is a Professor
86th Veh. Technol. Conf. (VTC-Fall), Toronto, ON, Canada, Aug. 2017, with the Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communications, Ministry of
pp. 1–5. Education, and the School of Information and Communication Engineering,
[24] Y. Gu, C. Jiang, L. X. Cai, M. Pan, L. Song, and Z. Han, “Dynamic path BUPT. His research interests include 5G mobile communication system,
to stability in LTE-unlicensed with user mobility: A matching frame- cognitive radio and heterogeneous networks, game theory, sensing and com-
work,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 16, no. 7, pp. 4547–4561, munication integrated system for autonomous driving vehicle, mmWave com-
Jul. 2017. munication system, and unmanned-aerial-vehicles (UAVs) communication.
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Comput. Elect. Eng., Dubai, UAE, Dec. 2009, pp. 375–379. Haizhou Wang (Graduate Student Member, IEEE)
[32] D. Bertsimas and J. N. Tsitsiklis, Introduction to Linear Optimization. is currently pursuing the master’s degree with
Belmont, MA, USA: Athena Sci., 1997. the School of Information and Communication
[33] B. Holfeld and E. Jorswieck, “On stable many-to-many matching Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and
for distributed medium access with reuse of spectral resources,” in Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Proc. 20th Int. ITG Workshop Smart Antennas (WSA), Munich, Germany, His research interests include unmanned aerial
Mar. 2016, pp. 1–8. vehicles communication, game theory, matching the-
[34] E. A. Jorswieck, “Stable matchings for resource allocation in wireless ory, and swarm resource management.
networks,” in Proc. 17th Int. Conf. Digit. Signal Process. (DSP), Corfu,
Greece, Jul. 2011, pp. 1–8.

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ZHANG et al.: MANY-TO-MANY MATCHING-THEORY-BASED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR UAVs
Zhiyong Feng (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Beijing
University of Posts and Telecommunications
(BUPT), Beijing, China.
She is a Professor with the School of Information
and Communication Engineering, BUPT, and
the Director of the Key Laboratory of Universal
Wireless Communications, Ministry of Education.
Her research interests include wireless network
architecture design and radio resource management
in 5th generation mobile networks (5G), spectrum
sensing and dynamic spectrum management in cognitive wireless networks,
universal signal detection and identification, and network information theory.
Prof. Feng is active in standards development, such as ITU-R WP5A/5C/5D,
IEEE 1900, ETSI, and CCSA.
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10009
Zhu Han (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.S. degree
in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China, in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical and computer engineering from
the University of Maryland, College Park, MD,
USA, in 1999 and 2003, respectively.
From 2000 to 2002, he was an R&D Engineer of
JDSU, Germantown, MD, USA. From 2003 to 2006,
he was a Research Associate with the University of
Maryland. From 2006 to 2008, he was an Assistant
Professor with Boise State University, Boise, ID,
USA. He is currently a John and Rebecca Moores Professor with the Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department and with the Computer Science
Department, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. His research interests
include wireless resource allocation and management, wireless communica-
tions and networking, game theory, big data analysis, security, and smart grid.
Dr. Han received an NSF Career Award in 2010, the Fred W. Ellersick Prize
of the IEEE Communication Society in 2011, the EURASIP Best Paper Award
for the Journal on Advances in Signal Processing in 2015, IEEE Leonard
G. Abraham Prize in the field of Communications Systems (best paper award
in IEEE JSAC) in 2016, and several best paper awards in IEEE conferences.
He is 1% highly cited researcher since 2017 according to Web of Science. He
is also the winner of 2021 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, for outstanding early
to mid-career contributions to technologies holding the promise of innovative
applications, with the following citation: “for contributions to game theory
and distributed management of autonomous communication networks.” He
was an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer from 2015 to
2018 and has been an AAAS Fellow since 2019 and an ACM Distinguished
Member since 2019.