Estimation-Based Non-Cooperative Power Allocation in Two-Tier Femtocell Networks

Femtocells (FCs) are low power, small-area cellular networks typically designed for use in a home or small business. The design of FC networks is challenging due to their independence of each other and of the underlying macrocell (MC) network thereby, necessitating non-cooperative resource allocation schemes. This paper develops a new distributed non-cooperative uplink (UL) power allocation scheme for FC users. Our scheme aims at fairly maximizing the throughput of femto users (FUs) based on periodic interference estimation performed by the femto access points (FAPs). We compare our scheme to the optimal centralized one. Simulation results show that our scheme presents good performances in terms of throughput and fairness.