RSSI-based dynamic coalition formation for cooperative interference management in femtocell networks

Dense deployment of femtocells can cause serious intra-tier interference. In this paper, we propose a new cooperative approach for allowing the femtocell user equipments (FUEs) to merge into cooperative groups, i.e., coalitions, for the uplink transmissions in a femtocell network, so as to reduce the intra-tier interference and improve the system performance, while taking the power cost for cooperation into account. We formulate this cooperation problem as a coalitional game in partition form with externalities due to the interference and the cost. Then, we propose a novel algorithm, which takes advantage of the characteristics of the femtocell network and allows the FUEs to interact and individually decide on which coalitions to participate in. Simulations are conducted to illustrate the behavior and the performance of the proposed coalition formation algorithm among FUEs, relative to the non-cooperative approach. Results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the non-cooperative case in terms of the aggregate system utility.