Evolutionary Games for Correlation-Aware Clustering in Massive Machine-to-Machine Networks

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of self-organizing, correlation-aware clustering is studied for a dense network of machine-type devices (MTDs) deployed over a cellular network. In dense machine-to-machine networks, MTDs are typically located within close proximity and gather correlated data, and, thus, clustering MTDs based on data correlation leads to a decrease in the number of redundant bits transmitted to the base station. The clustering problem is formulated as an evolutionary game, which models the interactions among a massive number of MTDs, in order to decrease MTD transmission power. A novel utility function that captures the tradeoff between minimizing the average MTD transmission power..