Pricing framework for almost blank subframe scheme in two‐tier heterogeneous networks

As a part of enhanced inter‐cell interference coordination (eICIC), almost blank subframe (ABS) is an efficient technique to mitigate the cross‐tier interference of two‐tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets) and enhance overall network performance. However, in small cells with closed subscriber group (CSG) mode, how to motivate small cell base stations (SBSs) to adopt ABS schemes is still one of technical challenges due to the selfish nature of SBSs. In this paper, we propose a pricing framework with ABS scheme that benefit both the macrocell and small cell tier. Within the proposed framework, each SBS with closed access policy performs ABS scheme by muting a portion of the whole frame in time domain, and then dedicating this interference‐free subframe to macrocell users (MUs) for exclusive use. In return, the macrocell base station (MBS) announces the price for these ABSs and offers a certain amount of revenue to each SBS according to the length of its ABS. Furthermore, we extend the small cell performance analysis to the scenario of hybrid access policy, which allow neighboring MUs to access small cells. To investigate the interaction between two tiers, we formulate the proposed framework as a one‐leader multiple‐follower Stackelberg game, which regards the MBS and SBSs as leader and followers, respectively. On the basis of the theoretical analysis, we prove that a unique Stackelberg equilibrium (SE) exists and obtain the optimal strategies for both tiers. Numerical results evaluate the utility performance of both tiers when SE is achieved and verify the validity of the proposed framework.     

Cluster based resource allocation in two‐tier HetNets with hierarchical throughput constraints

Two‐tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets), formed by deploying small cell base stations (SBSs) over existing macrocells, can enhance the network performance in future fifth generation network. However, the cross‐/co‐tier interference in HetNets also will severely influence the user throughput of both tiers. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation and interference mitigation problem in cluster based orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) two‐tier HetNets. In a typical cluster, one SBS is selected as the cluster head to allocate resources among all small cells to guarantee their throughput requirements. Hybrid access policy enables small cells to suppress the cross‐tier interference and earn additional revenue from macrocells, but it also leads to decrease of available resources for small cell users (SUs). To compensate hybrid access SBSs for their resources loss, we impose hierarchical SU throughput constraints on the optimization problem, which guarantee these small cells more resources than closed access ones. Besides, the cross‐tier interference constraint is also considered to protect the transmissions of macrocell users. Accordingly, a subgradient iteration based resource allocation algorithm is proposed. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can satisfy SU throughput constraints of all small cells with different access policies and guarantee quality of service requirements of all accessed macrocell users in hybrid access small cells.     

Stackelberg game for backhaul resource allocation in the two-tier LTE femtocell networks

As one promising technology for indoor coverage and service offloading from the conventional cellular networks, femtocells have attracted considerable attention in recent years. However, most of previous work are focused on resource allocation during the access period, and the backhaul involved resource allocation is seriously ignored. The authors studied the backhaul resource allocation in the wireless backhaul based two-tier heterogeneous networks （HetNets）, in which cross-tier interference control during access period is jointly considered. Assuming that the macrocell base station （MBS） protects itself from interference by pricing the backhaul spectrum allocated to femtocells, a Stackelberg game is formulated to work on the joint utility maximization of the macrocell and femtocells subject to a maximum interference tolerance at the MBS. The closed-form expressions of the optimal strategies are obtained to characterize the Stackelberg equilibriums for the proposed games, and a backhaul spectrum payment selection algorithm with guaranteed convergence is proposed to implement the backhaul resource allocation for femtocell base stations （FBSs）. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the Stackelberg equilibrium （SE） is obtained by the proposed algorithm and the proposed scheme is effective in backhaul resource allocation and macrocell protection in the spectrum-sharing HetNets.     

ESPS scheme for two‐tier interference suppression in a heterogeneous network with cooperative femtocells

The coexistence of a macrocell and a number of femtocells often leads to a two‐tier heterogeneous network, where the co‐tier interference (CotIN) and cross‐tier interference (CrotIN) both degrade users' quality of service. In order to suppress these interferences, we propose a precoding scheme in a heterogeneous network with cooperative femtocells, called CotIN elimination and CrotIN suppression with precoding criterion selection (ESPS) scheme. In this scheme, we first eliminate the CotINs of each user by applying the QR decomposition to channel matrix. Then the CrotINs of macrocell users and femtocell users are suppressed via the macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell access points (FAPs) with precoding criterion selection, respectively. By using the ESPS scheme, spatial resources can be efficiently exploited. In addition, our ESPS scheme requires little information exchange between MBS and FAPs without iteration and thus significantly reduces the implementation complexity. Furthermore, the robustness is increased through introducing the information of channel uncertainty into the ESPS when channel estimation or quantization error exists. The performance analysis for the ESPS demonstrates that the ESPS is practical in the heterogeneous networks. Finally, simulation results show that the ESPS can decrease users' bit error rates and increase their transmission rates. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysis of downlink power control and cooperation scheme for two‐tier heterogeneous cellular network

The traditional cellular network cannot keep pace with the dramatic growth in data traffic due to exponentially increasing number of multimedia applications and mobile subscribers. Recently, femto base stations (FBSs) are deployed with the macro base station (MBS) tier for off‐loading the data traffic and to improve the indoor coverage of the heterogeneous cellular network. However, FBS deployment also increases the cross‐tier interference of the heterogeneous cellular network resulting in outage performance degradation of MBS tier. This work develops an analytical framework to limit the cross‐tier interference of MBS tier using power control scheme (PCS). The proposed PCS works on path loss inversion and location‐based power level rule for FBS. Moreover, a cooperation scheme and an association policy with MBS (CSAPM) are introduced to improve the outage performance of the FBS tier. Tools from the stochastic geometry are used for deriving the signal to interference and noise ratio outage probability, total outage probability, and area spectral efficiency (ASE) of MBS tier and FBS tier. Additionally, ASE maximization problem is formulated to evaluate the optimal density of FBSs. The effectiveness of the proposed PCS and CSAPM on outage performance and ASE are numerically demonstrated. It is noted from the results that the proposed CSAPM can compensate the loss in outage performance of FBS tier due to PCS. Finally, simulation results validate the analytical results.     

Spectrum‐efficiency enhancement in small cell networks with biasing cell association and eICIC: An analytical framework

Load balancing and interference management play crucial roles in small cell network (SCN) capacity and spectrum efficiency (SE) enhancement. By performing load balancing between macrocell and small cells, biasing cell association has attracted great attentions since it is proposed. Additionally, enhanced intercell interference coordination (eICIC) technology is also developed as an efficient interference mitigation method for the biasing cell association‐based SCNs. In this paper, we develop an SE enhancement framework with joint consideration of the eICIC factor and biasing factor. Using the stochastic geometry theory, the network is modeled by spatial Poisson point process. We firstly derive the downlink average rate, which is performed at a typical user. Secondly, the eICIC factor‐related network SE is analyzed by proving the existence of optimal eICIC factor, which maximizes the network SE. For the intractability of the closed‐form expression of optimal eICIC factor, a bisection search‐based algorithm is developed then. At last, numerical results confirm our analysis and show the proposed algorithm performance. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stackelberg game based interference management for two-tier femtocell networks

Femtocell is viewed as a promising option for mobile operators to improve coverage and provide high-data-rate services in a cost-effective manner. This paper considers the uplink interference management problem in a spectrum-sharing femtocell network. Assuming that the macrocell base station (MBS) is rewarded for sharing the spectrum with femtocells by setting a reasonable interference cap (IC) for femtocell users’ (FUEs’) transmissions. Within IC, the FUEs allocate their transmission powers competitively while not introducing much interference to both the macrocell users (MUEs) and other FUEs. A Stackelberg game is formulated to jointly maximize the utility of MBS and the individual utility of FUEs. Specifically, the maximum tolerable interference at the MBS is used as the resource that the leader (MBS) and the followers (FUEs) compete for. Then, the backward induction method is applied to achieve the Stackelberg equilibrium and a distributed power update rule is developed for FUEs. In addition, the implementation protocol is presented, some issues related to the implementations and some future extensions regarding the MUEs’ uplink protection are discussed. Lastly, numerical results demonstrate the performance of our proposed power allocation in detail, and show the effects of varying the number of FBSs and changing other system parameters on the system’s performance.     

A preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation in two-tier femtocell networks

This paper considers the co-channel interference mitigation problem and proposes a preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation in two-tier femtocell networks. The proposed cross-tier handover algorithm introduces a preset threshold cross-tier handover policy, which takes into account both the time-to-stay (TTS) of a macrocell user equipment (MUE)/femtocell user equipment (FUE) in a femtocell/the macrocell, and the received signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) at a femtocell access point (FAP)/the macrocell base station (MBS) in making a cross-tier handover decision for an MUE/FUE. A cross-tier handover decision is made by comparing the TTS of an MUE/FUE in a femtocells/the macrocell and the SINR at a FAP/the MBS with a preset TTS threshold and different SINR thresholds. The objective of the preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm is to increase the received SINR at the MBS/FAPs and thus improve the network performance. The performance of the proposed cross-tier handover algorithm with the minimum power transmission and the optimal power transmission is analyzed, respectively. Numerical results show that the proposed preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm can significantly improve the network performance in terms of the outage probability, user sum rate, and network capacity.     

Distributed Resource Allocation in Two‐Hierarchy Networks

In this paper, a new distributed resource allocation algorithm is proposed to alleviate the cross‐tier interference for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access macrocell and femtocell overlay. Specifically, the resource allocation problem is modeled as a non‐cooperative game. Based on game theory, we propose an iterative algorithm between subchannel and power allocation called distributed resource allocation which requires no coordination among the two‐hierarchy networks. Finally, a macrocell link quality protection process is proposed to guarantee the macrocell UE's quality of service to avoid severe cross‐tier interference from femtocells. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve remarkable performance gains as compared to the pure waterfilling algorithm.     

An efficient interference mitigation approach via quasi‐access in two‐tier macro‐femto heterogeneous networks

Two‐tier heterogeneous networks, where the current cellular networks, that is, macrocells, are overlapped with a large number of randomly distributed femtocells, can potentially bring significant benefits to spectral utilization and system capacity. In a two‐tier network, the cross‐tier interference needs to be handled properly. Unlike the downlink interference, the uplink (UL) interference at femtocell caused by macrocell user equipment (MUE) has not been addressed sufficiently. When an MUE is located near the coverage of femtocell, its transmit power may cause UL interference to the femtocell receiver, especially for the closed subscriber group femtocells that share the entire frequency spectrum with macrocell. We propose a novel quasi‐access strategy, which allows the interfering MUE to connect with the interfered femtocell access point (FAP) while only via UL. It can significantly alleviate the UL interference at the FAP as well as its neighbors, in the meantime, benefit the macro‐tier. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improved cooperative spectrum sensing of femtocells with hybrid TDD access scheme in massive MIMO system

To improve the sensing performance and achieve higher throughput of the femtocells (FCs) while alleviating the influence to the macrocell in the cognitive massive multiple‐input and multiple‐output system (MIMO), we propose in this paper a hybrid time‐division duplex (TDD) access scheme of the FCs with confidence factor–based weighted cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS). A first, we present an efficient hybrid TDD access scheme for better spectrum reuse of the FCs based on the typical TDD and reversed TDD schemes. Furthermore, confidence factor–based weighted CSS has been used for better spectrum sensing and interference alleviation. In the cognitive massive MIMO system, FC base stations will form dynamical clustering based on the channel conditions, sense the spectrum through cooperative scheme, and decide whether to access the spectrum or not. After information exchange within each FC cluster, the FC base stations can obtain and update their confidence factors and weight factors based on the sensing results and reliability. Numerical results and theoretical analysis show that the proposed scheme can get more accurate sensing results, increase the throughput and the spectrum access opportunity of the FCs, and efficiently alleviate the interference to the macrocell tier.     

Price‐based interference management in dense femtocell systems

Femtocell technology has been drawing considerable attention as a cost‐effective means of improving cellular coverage and capacity. However, under co‐channel deployment, femtocell system in dense environment may incur high uplink interference to existing macrocells and experiences strong inter‐cell interference at the same time. To manage the uplink interference to macrocell, as well as the inter‐cell interference, this paper proposes a price‐based uplink interference management scheme for dense femtocell systems. Specifically, on the one hand, to guarantee the macrocell users' quality of service, the macrocell base station prices the interference from femtocell users (FUEs) subject to a maximum tolerable interference power constraint. On the other hand, the inter‐cell interference is also taken into consideration. Moreover, a Stackelberg game model is adopted to jointly study the utility maximization of the macrocell base station and FUEs. Then, in order to reduce the amount of information exchange, we design a distributed power allocation algorithm for FUEs. In addition, admission control is adopted to protect the active FUEs' performance. Numerical results show that the price‐based interference management scheme is effective. Meanwhile, it is shown that the distributed power allocation combined with admission control is capable of robustly protecting the performance of all the active FUEs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust uplink power control for co-channel two-tier femtocell networks

This paper is concerned with uplink interference suppression problem in two-tier femtocell networks through power control. Specifically, we consider the Quality-of-Service (QoS) of the macrocell user and femtocell users in terms of their received Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratios (SINRs) at macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell base stations (FBSs), and we also take femtocell users’ power efficiency into consideration by designing an objective function, which is a weighted sum of transmission power and squared SINR difference between femtocell user's maximum SINR and actual SINR. Due to the error of the SINR at MBS caused by distance errors, a robust uplink power control problem is formulated, and it is equivalent to a robust convex optimization problem with femtocell users’ SINR constraints. Then, the robust convex optimization problem is converted into a general convex optimization problem. Moreover, a distributed power control algorithm combined with admission control is presented to obtain femtocell users’ optimal power allocation. Numerical results show the convergence and effectiveness of the proposed uplink power control algorithm.     

Joint backhaul bandwidth and power allocation in heterogeneous cellular networks: A two‐level approach

We investigate the problem of joint downlink wireless backhaul bandwidth (WBB) and power allocation in heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs). A WBB partitioning scheme is considered, which allocates the whole bandwidth between the macrocell and small cells for data transmission and backhauling. We formulate an optimization problem to maximize the weighted sum logarithmic utility function by jointly optimizing WBB portion and fronthaul power allocation of each base station with consideration of the backhaul capacity limitation on each small cell. In order to solve this joint optimization problem, we propose a hierarchical two‐level approach and decompose the original problem into two independent subproblems: the WBB allocation at the macrocell base station (MBS) and the power allocation at both the MBS and small cell base stations (SBSs). Accordingly, the optimal WBB portion and power allocation solutions are obtained, respectively. Furthermore, we develop a distributed algorithm to implement the joint WBB and power allocation. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach and analyze the impact of the weighted coefficient and backhaul capacity limitation on the network performance. In addition, significant performance gains can be achieved by the proposed approach over the benchmark.     

Energy‐efficient resource allocation for device‐to‐device communication through noncooperative game theory

Wireless network with high data rate applications has seen a rapid growth in recent years. This improved quality of service (QoS) leads to huge energy consumption in wireless network. Therefore, in order to have an energy‐efficient resource allocation in cellular system, a device‐to‐device (D2D) communication is the key component to improve the QoS. In this paper, we propose a noncooperative game (NCG) theory approach for resource allocation to improve energy efficiency (EE) of D2D pair. A three‐tier network with macrocell base station (MBS), femtocell base station (FBS), and D2D pair is considered, which shares the uplink resource block. A resource allocation strategy with constraints is arrived, which maintains minimum throughput for each user in the network. The proposed resource allocation strategy optimizes the EE of D2D pair in the three‐tier network, which achieves Nash equilibrium (NE) and Pareto optimality (PO). Simulation results validate that EE is uniform and optimum for all D2D pair, which converges to NE when channel is static and it converges to PO when the channel is dynamic.     

QoS Guaranteed Resource Allocation Scheme for Cognitive Femtocells in LTE Heterogeneous Networks with Universal Frequency Reuse

In this paper, we propose a novel resource allocation scheme for co-channel interference avoidance in LTE heterogeneous networks with universal spectrum reuse where both macro users (MUs) and cognitive femto base stations (FBSs) within the same macrocell coverage can dynamically reuse whole spectrum. Specifically, resource blocks (RBs) are shared between cognitive FBSs in underlay mode while the resource sharing among FBSs and MUs is in overlay mode. The macrocell is divided into inner and outer regions with the inner region further divided into three sectors. The proposed scheme addresses co-channel interference (CCI) by employing fractional frequency reuse (FFR) for RB allocation in the outer region of the macrocell and increase the distance of users that reuse the same RB within the macrocell. Part of RBs are allocated to the outer region of the macrocell with a FFR factor of 1/3, while the remaining RBs are dynamically allocated to each sector in the inner region of macrocell based on MUs demand to efficiently utilize the available spectrum. A basic macro base station (MBS) assistance is required by the FBS in selection of suitable RB to avoid interference with MU in each sector. With the proposed solution, both macro and femto users can dynamically access the whole spectrum while having minimum bandwidth guarantee even under fully congested scenarios. Moreover, the proposed scheme practically eliminates the cross-tier interference and the CCI problem in heterogeneous network reduces to inter-femtocell interference. The throughput and outage performances of the proposed scheme are validated through extensive simulations under LTE network parameters. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a performance gain of more than 1.5 dB in terms of SINRs of both macro user and femto user compared to traditional cognitive and non-cognitive schemes without bandwidth guarantee for femtocells.     

Hybrid channel gain prioritized access‐aware cell association with interference mitigation in LTE‐Advanced HetNets

LTE‐Advanced heterogeneous networks deployment is meant to address the increasing demand for quality of service, high data rates and coverage extension. Load balancing is among the primary challenges, especially when the user equipments (UEs) associate with diverse transmission power network tiers using received signal strength. The low‐power network tier's spectrum will be underutilized, and UEs associated with them will be inflicted by interference from the high‐power network tier. The proposed hybrid channel gain prioritized access (HCGPA)‐aware cell association scheme stresses the importance of combined metrics with interference mitigation to simultaneously achieve load balancing and enhance performance among the network tiers. The high‐priority UEs associate with the tier that gives the maximum channel gain being higher than a given threshold. While the low‐priority UEs association is based on the maximum joint metrics (channel gain, channel access probabilities of low‐priority UEs and high‐priority UEs). The HCGPA scheme has 1.72 times the number of UEs connected to low‐power networks, 8% better load balancing fairness, compared with the conventional reference signal receive power and RSRP + 6 dB bias cell associations. Although the susceptibility of HCGPA to interference led to the poor signal to interference to noise ratio (SINR) performance of the cell‐edge UEs, the cell‐centre UEs exhibited the best spectral efficiency performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Outage probability in Poisson‐cluster‐based LTE two‐tier femtocell networks

This paper analyzes two‐tier orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (OFDM)‐based cellular structure, when the traditional macrocell structure is extended with femtocells. The benefit of using femtocells is the capacity and coverage extension capability. To fulfill strict quality of service requirements in next‐generation mobile networks such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE‐Advanced, capacity and coverage enhancing becomes rather important. On the other hand, adding small cells such as femtocells next to macrocell modifies the interference pattern of the current region. Therefore, the number of small cells in a given area should be limited. In this paper, we provide an analytic framework to calculate the outage probability for a macrocell user in OFDM‐based femtocell networks when the deployed femto base stations are composing an independent Poisson cluster process such as Thomas cluster process. Cluster‐based femtocell modeling offers accurate network planning for mobile operators. In this cluster‐based realization, we give an interference characterization and consider the outage probability for a randomly deployed user when communication channel is infected with Rayleigh fading. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Statistics of macrocell-synchronous femtocell-asynchronous users? delays for improved femtocell uplink receiver design

In a typical macrocell network, the mobile users are synchronized to the macrocell base station (mBS), where users further away to the mBS transmit their signals earlier. In such a network, the signals of the macrocell users arrive at a femtocell base station (fBS) asynchronously, which may yield interference problems such as inter-carrier-interference in orthogonal frequency domain multiple access (OFDMA) systems. In this letter, statistics of the arrival times of macrocell-synchronous femtocell-asynchronous mobile users' signals to an fBS is derived (conditioned on the fBS-mBS distance), and its implications on the femtocell uplink receiver design are briefly discussed.     

Cell Selection for Load Balancing in Heterogeneous Networks

The vision of advanced long-term evolution (LTE-A) project is set to ultimate increase of network capacity in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). In HetNets with small cell configuration, a considerable majority of user devices is eventually connected to the macrocell base station (MBS), while small base stations (BSs), such as femtocell access points (FAPs), are still without any user. This results in unbalanced load and reduces the data rate of macrocell user equipment (MUE). In this paper, a method is proposed for load balancing among FAPs, while desired throughput is achieved. The proposed method uses the estimated received signal strength from different BSs and adjusted pilot signals. Under the critical signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) condition, a list of candidate FAPs is prepared. The updated candidate list henceforth does not include the least visited FAPs, which in turn leads to lower unnecessary handoffs. Once the BS with the highest number of free RBs and the highest pilot signal power is selected, FAP allocates the RBs with higher SINRs (qualified RBs) to user. In the case of FAP unavailability, the algorithm compels users to connect to the MBS with adequate qualified RBs. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated under a variety of FAPs density, and the number and velocity of users in terms of throughput and Jain’s fairness index. The results evidence affordable improvements in the throughput and Jain’s index in comparison with other methods.