Game theoretic approach for joint resource allocation in spectrum sharing femtocell networks

In this paper, we study the joint price and power allocation in spectrum sharing macro-femtocell networks. The proposed game theoretic framework is based on bi-level Stackelberg game where macro base station (MBS) works as a leader and underlaid femto base stations (FBSs) work as followers. MBS has fixed data rate and imposes interference price on FBSs for maintaining its data rate and earns revenue while FBSs jointly adjust their power for maximizing their data rates and utility functions. Since the interference from FBSs to macro user equipment is kept under a given threshold and FBSs compete against each other for power allocation, there is a need to determine a power allocation strategy which converges to Stackelberg equilibrium. We consider two cases for MBS power allocation, i.e., fixed and dynamic power. MBS can adjust its power in case of dynamic power allocation according to its minimum data rate requirement and number of FBSs willing to share the spectrum. For both cases we consider uniform and nonuniform pricing where MBS charges same price to all FBSs for uniform pricing and different price to each FBS for non-uniform pricing according to its induced interference. We obtain unique closed form solution for each case if the co-interference at FBSs is assumed fixed. And an iterative algorithm which converges rapidly is also proposed to take into account the effect of co-tier interference on interference price and power allocation strategy. The results are explained with numerical simulation examples which validate the effectiveness of our proposed solutions.