Hierarchical Power Game with Dual-Utility in Two-Tier OFDMA Femtocell Networks

Abstract

This paper addresses the cross-tier interference mitigation problem using power allocation in two-tier OFDMA femtocell networks. We formulate the power allocation problem as a dual-utility hierarchical (Stackelberg) game with a leader-follower approach. The leaders (macrocells) foresight the response of followers (femtocells), and maximize their individual utility in a non-cooperative manner. After the leaders apply their strategies, the followers also maximize their own utility in a non-cooperative manner. Then the Backward Induction method is applied to achieve the Stackelberg equilibrium. Simulation results show that the proposed hierarchical game with dual-utility outperforms the non-cooperative approach and the hierarchical game with single-utility in terms of average outage probability and average throughput.