Utility-based femtocell pilot management

Enterprise femtocell deployments present numerous design challenges for network operators due to their high density, poor radio environments, and mixture of public and private users. Among these challenges, femtocell pilot management is particularly important due to its potential impact on both femtocell and macrocell users. Femtocell pilots determine femtocell coverage, but must be designed with consideration for macrocell transmissions and users. We introduce a utility-based femtocell pilot management algorithm that sets femtocell pilots by finding the Nash equilibrium of an N-player strategic game, using a utility function derived from the femtocell coverage radius. Using simulations, we find that the game-theoretic interference management algorithm reduces outage probabilities relative to a naive interference management scheme by up to 43% in the open access femtocell case, and 17% in the closed access femtocell case. Our conclusion is that game theory can be applied to the distributed problem of femtocell pilot estimation, with good results.