Energy-Efficient User Association and Resource Allocation for Decentralized Mutual Learning

In this paper, a novel decentralized mutual learning (DML) network is designed, where each mobile device can share knowledge with its neighbour devices via bidirectional device-to-device (D2D) communication. We subdivide and discuss mutual learning scenarios, and investigate the user association and resource allocation problems for the one-to-many scenario. With constraints on power, bandwidth and communication latency, we formulate a non-convex optimization problem to minimize the average communication energy consumption for sharing new knowledge. On the basis, a two-layer iterative algorithm is proposed, which consists of an outer layer algorithm based on particle swarm optimisation (PSO) for searching a suitable user association strategy and an inner layer algorithm based on sum-of-ratios optimization for achieving a globally optimal allocation of communication resource. Numerical results are presented to verify the fast convergence and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of a trade-off between energy consumption and knowledge sharing efficiency.