Co-tier uplink power control in femtocell networks by Stackelberg game with pricing

A two-way pricing mechanism is incorporated into the Stackelberg game to mitigate the co-tier interference by controlling the uplink transmit power. Specifically, by employing the pricing mechanism, leader femto base station (FBS) can get reward from follower femtocell user equipments (FUEs) and vice versa. All FBSs are assumed to operate under the co-channel mode, i.e., all FBSs use the same frequency band and every FBS is operated in the closed subscriber group (CSG) access mode. By assigning the maximum tolerable co-tier interference, the leader FBS protects itself by pricing the interference from follower FUEs. On the contrary, follower FUEs control the transmit power based on the pricing strategy of the leader. For different interference constraints, simulation results obtained by Matlab show that leader and followers can always compromise on a Stackel-berg equilibrium (SE) point where both leader and followers achieve the maximal utility. Hence, the proposed Stackelberg game with two-way pricing mechanism power control scheme provides a viable solution to mitigate co-tier interference in femtocell networks.