A load-balancing handoff mechanism for two-tier femtocell networks: A game approach

In the two-tier femtocell networks, a macrocell user equipment (MUE) initiates a handoff procedure when the received signal strength from its serving macrocell base station (MBS) is below a predefined threshold. By introducing the concept of game theory, this paper proposes a handoff mechanism that comprises two phases. In the first phase, a modified Dutch auction (MDA) is used to sift the candidate femtocell base stations (FBSs) from the neighboring FBSs of the MUE. If the number of candidate FBSs is greater than one, the second phase is initiated. In the second phase, each candidate FBS determines if it wants to accept the handoff request of the MUE by executing a stochastic election process (SEP). In SEP, in order to balance the load of FBSs, an FBS with light load is with higher probability to accept the handoff request. Simulation results show that the loads of FBSs are balanced by employing the proposed game based handoff mechanism in the two-tier femtocell networks.