A Rewarding Framework for Network Resource Sharing in Co-Channel Hybrid Access Femtocell Networks

Abstract

With the explosive growth in mobile data traffic, femtocell technology is regarded as the most effective way to enhance the mobile service quality and system capacity of cellular networks. However, the major problem with femtocell deployment is finding an appropriate access control mode that mobile operators and users are willing to adopt. Among the various kinds of access control modes, the hybrid access mode is considered the most promising because it allows femtocells to give preferential access to femtocell owners, while other public users can only access femtocells with certain restrictions. Because all femtocell owners are selfish, how to provide sufficient incentives so that they will share their femtocell resources is a challenging issue. To address the problem, we propose an economic framework for mobile operator and femtocell users based on game theoretical analysis. We also exploit the concept of revenue sharing, which provides a positive cycle to sustain the femtocell service. In the framework, a femtocell game is formulated where the femtocell owners determine the proportion of femtocell resources they will share with public users, while the operator maximizes its benefit by setting the ratio of the revenue distributed to femtocell owners. We analyze the existence and uniqueness of the Nash Equilibrium of the game. The results of extensive simulations show that the proposed framework maximizes the operator’s benefit and satisfies the users’ service requirements.