Price-based interference control for two-tier femtocell networks

This paper presents a novel price-based interference control scheme for two-tier femtocell networks, aiming to limit the interference from femtocell users to macrocell base station (MBS). Assuming that the MBS protects itself by pricing the interference power from the femtocell users, the femtocell users set their transmission powers by competitively selecting the interference power fractions under the constraint of the total tolerable interference. The problem of femtocell users’ competitive interference occupation process is cast into a non-cooperative interference power purchase game, and the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium is proved. Then, a distributed interference power fraction iterative algorithm is developed to find the Nash equilibrium of the game, and the convergence analyses in both synchronous and asynchronous cases are presented. The distributed implementations are also shown. Simulation results show the convergence of the interference power fraction iterative algorithm and the effectiveness of the proposed interference control scheme.