Price-Based Resource Allocation for Spectrum-Sharing Femtocell Networks: A Stackelberg Game Approach

This paper investigates price-based resource allocation strategies for two-tier femtocell networks, in which a central macrocell is underlaid with distributed femtocells, all operating over the same frequency band. Assuming that the macrocell base station (MBS) protects itself by pricing the interference from femtocell users, a Stackelberg game is formulated to study the joint utility maximization of the macrocell and femtocells subject to a maximum tolerable interference power constraint at the MBS. Two practical femtocell network models are investigated: sparsely deployed scenario for rural areas and densely deployed scenario for urban areas. For each scenario, two pricing schemes: uniform pricing and non-uniform pricing, are proposed. The Stackelberg equilibriums for the proposed games are characterized, and an effective distributed interference price bargaining algorithm with guaranteed convergence is proposed for the uniform-pricing case. Numerical examples are presented to verify the proposed studies. It is shown that the proposed schemes are effective in resource allocation and macrocell protection for both the uplink and downlink transmissions in spectrum-sharing femtocell networks.