Spectrum reuse scheme in two-tier HetNets: A stackelberg game approach

The skyrocketing increase of mobile traffic exacerbates the stringent demand for high spectrum efficient communications. In this paper, a spectrum reuse scheme is proposed for heterogeneous networks (HetNets) using Stackelberg game approach to decrease cross-tier interference, thereby effectively improving spectrum efficiency. The macro base stations (BSs), acting as leader in the game, allocate a part of spectrum resource to femto BSs. In return, the femto BSs provide services to some nearby macro mobile users as well as its original femto mobile users. The utility of macro BS is designed as average throughput and that of femto BS as original normalized distortion rate function. A spectrum efficient Stackelberg based spectrum reuse algorithm is developed to resolve the optimal strategies and solutions via simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves spectrum efficiency. Comparing with a Stackelberg game based cooperative spectrum leasing scheme with monetary price, the proposed scheme achieves comparable better network spectral efficiency.