Resource allocation scheme based on game theory in heterogeneous networks

As an effective solution for indoor coverage and service offloading from the conventional cellular networks, femtocells have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. This study investigates the resource block (RB) and power allocation in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Specifically, the concern here is to maximize the signal to interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of macrocell and energy efficiency of femtocell while providing the finite interference. In this paper, the system model is divided to two layers, in which the macro base station and clusters constitute the first layer network; femtocells in cluster make up the second layer network. Because of the different model structures, different game theories are used in different layers. Stackelberg game is used in the first layer, and non-cooperation game is used in the second layer. Meanwhile RB and power levels stand for the actions that are associated with each player in the game. The problem of resource allocation is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem. In order to minimize the complexity of the proposed algorithm, the resource allocation task is decomposed into two sub problems: a RB allocation and a power allocation. The result is compared with the traditional methods, the analysis illustrates the proposed algorithm has a better performance regarding SINR and energy efficiency of the heterogeneous networks. © 2016 The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications