Efficient QoS Support for Robust Resource Allocation in Blockchain-Based Femtocell Networks

Abstract

Blockchain-based femtocell networks aim to build decentralized frameworks which enable easy deployment and low power consumption, thus they have been seen promising technologies to make up the coverage of cellular networks in the next generation communication system. This article aims to employ power control to support quality-of-service provisioning, especially the guarantee for the transmission rate of a macrocell user (MUE) and the time delay of femtocell users (FUEs) in two-tier femtocell networks, where the MUE and FUEs share the same communication channel. We formulate the interactions among the macrocell base station and FUEs as a Stackelberg game to maximize the utilities of MUE and FUEs by obtaining the optimal power allocation and pricing strategy. Considering the uncertainty of channel gain which is expressed as a function of transmission distance, we propose a worst-case method to transform the uncertain optimization problem into a deterministic one. We then design two algorithms by considering the dynamics of FUEs, i.e., FUEs may join and leave femtocells. Numerical results verify the convergence and superior performance of our proposed algorithms.