Mean Field Games for 5G Ultra‐dense Networks: A Resource Management Perspective

This chapter explains the network densification in 5G from the lower to the upper layer perspective, i.e. terminals, access nodes, and cloud edge layers. It introduces the mean field game, which is more suitable for designing and analyzing the ultra-dense networks with spatial-temporal dynamics and densification. A survey of the current applications of the mean field game to device-to-device, 5G ultra-dense radio access, and cloud-edge networks, with the main concentration on the featured technical problems of interference mitigation, energy management, and caching, is presented. This can help in understanding the typical characteristics of mean field games better. Finally, several open problems are discussed for further development of mean field games in the 5G era. In the future 5G network, the cloud is expected to expand to the network edge and portable devices can become networking nodes instead of being just the convectional end-point that terminates the communication link.