Towards Cooperation by Carrier Aggregation in Heterogeneous Networks: A Hierarchical Game Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical game-theoretic framework for resource sharing in heterogeneous networks, enabling cooperative spectrum sharing between licensed and unlicensed users through coalition formation and pricing strategies.

Contribution

It develops a novel hierarchical game model combining coalition formation and Stackelberg games, with proofs of equilibrium existence and algorithms for distributed implementation.

Findings

Proves the non-empty core of the coalition formation game.

Derives the unique Stackelberg Equilibrium for the hierarchical game.

Proposes distributed algorithms for coalition formation and resource optimization.

Abstract

This paper studies the resource allocation problem for a heterogeneous network (HetNet) in which the spectrum owned by a macro-cell operator (MCO) can be shared by both unlicensed users (UUs) and licensed users (LUs). We formulate a novel hierarchical game theoretic framework to jointly optimize the transmit powers and sub-band allocations of the UUs as well as the pricing strategies of the MCO. In our framework, an overlapping coalition formation (OCF) game has been introduced to model the cooperative behaviors of the UUs. We then integrate this OCF game into a Stackelberg game-based hierarchical framework. We prove that the core of our proposed OCF game is non-empty and introduce an optimal sub-band allocation scheme for UUs. A simple distributed algorithm is proposed for UUs to autonomously form optimal coalition formation structure. The Stackelberg Equilibrium (SE) of the proposed hierarchical game is derived and its uniqueness and optimality have been proved. A distributed joint optimization algorithm is also proposed to approach the SE of the game with limited information exchanges between the MCO and the UU.