Unlicensed band sharing based on bargaining game for heterogeneous networks

Abstract

Currently, limited licensed frequency bands cannot meet the increasing demands for various wireless communication applications any more. It is necessary to extend wireless communication networks to unlicensed spectrum. In this paper, we propose a new bargaining framework for unlicensed band access to achieve high spectrum efficiency, where one radio access technology (RAT) (such as macro cellular network) "competes" the unlicensed bands with multiple other RATs (such as small cellular networks or Wi-Fi) virtually. Considering that macro cell can share unlicensed frequencies with multiple small cells which are in the same coverage area for more freedom, we use bargaining game theory to fairly and effectively share the unlicensed spectrum between macro and multiple heterogeneous small cell networks, where bargaining loss and time dissipation loss for virtual "price" of unlicensed bands are mainly considered. In the one-to-many bargaining process, we also develop a multiple RAT alliance game strategy to reduce transmission loss in a joint manner. Simulation results show that the proposed unlicensed band sharing algorithm significantly improves the spectrum efficiency performance compared with the other practical schemes for heterogeneous networks.