Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

7

Game Theoretic Approach to Distributed Bandwidth Allocation in OFDMA-based Self-organizing Femtocell Networks

Chenxi Zhu and Wei-Peng Chen

Fujitsu Laboratories of America, USA

7.1 Introduction

The femtocell is a new concept rapidly being developed in the wireless communication industry [1,2]. A femtocell (called a home eNB or HeNB in the 3GPP standard) is a low-cost miniature base station placed in a user's home or small office to provide private (or semi-public), high throughput cellular access to its subscribers. It uses the homeowner's wired broadband access (DSL, cable modem or fibre) as a backhaul to connect to the wireless operator's network, and operates in the spectrum licensed to the wireless operator. Besides improving the user's indoor access quality of the service (QoS), it leads to significant savings for the operator. It reduces the traffic load from the operator's macrocellular network, and increases the overall capacity in a given area through aggressive spatial spectrum reuse. By using the user's internet access as the backhaul, the wireless operator reduces its capital expenditure and operation cost significantly. Architectures and protocols of femtocells are still being standardized in the 3GPP standard body [3,4].

A major difference between the traditional macrocellular network and a femtocell network is in their deployments. A macrocell network is carefully designed and optimized by the operator. A femtocell network, on the other hand, is essentially unplanned ...