Win–win relationship between macrocell and femtocells for spectrum sharing in LTE‐A

Abstract

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) are likely to provide a ubiquitous access to the mobile broadband services as they involve various small cells, each targeting a different environment in the network. However, the application of the advanced resource allocation techniques is highly needed in order to handle the inter-cell interference and fully exploit the benefits of such networks. In this study, the authors address the spectrum sharing problem in a HetNet composed of a macrocell and several femtocells. They propose a new approach in which macrocell and femtocells can simultaneously share the available bandwidth, while avoiding the intra-tier interference and helping the macrocell to offload by expanding the cell range of some femtocells. The author's approach is formulated as a Stackelberg game, in which the macrocell is selling bandwidths to femtocells in exchange of some victim macro-users to serve, mainly the macro-users who undergo severe interference from the neighbouring femtocells. They demonstrated that their game theoretic reaches a stable state called Stackelberg equilibrium analytically and by simulations. More importantly, they show that overall network performance is improved in terms of total femtocells’ throughputs and spectral efficiency of the macro-users who are in the vicinity of the femtocells.