Pricing and power allocation in sensing-based cognitive femtocell networks

In this paper, we investigate the pricing and resource allocation strategies in the two-tier sensing-based cognitive fem-tocell networks, where the macrocell and femtocells are operating over the same frequency band. The macrocell base station protects itself by setting the maximum aggregate interference constraint and makes profit by pricing the interference from femtocell users. Different from the conventional underlay-based networks where there is one price only, in the proposed sensing-based networks two prices are adopted corresponding to the idle and busy states of the macrocell. We consider both cases of perfect and imperfect sensing at the femtocells and solve the pricing and power allocation for both macrocell and femtocells using the energy efficiency as the utility function. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the energy efficiency significantly in spectrum sharing femtocell networks.