Revenue Improvement for Wireless Service Providers in Hybrid Macrocell–Femtocell Networks

Femto base stations (FBSs) are cost-effective choices for wireless service providers (WSPs) to provide better indoor coverage and capacity in cellular networks. With the introduction of femtocells, spectrum allocation among macro base stations (MBSs) and numerous FBSs becomes challenging. WSPs will allocate resources among hierarchical infrastructures to mitigate mutual interference and maximize WSPs' revenue from service provisioning. In this paper, we propose a channel allocation and service provision framework to help WSPs allocate resources and increase revenue. The spectrum allocation and revenue maximization problem is formulated as a convex problem, and a centralized method is proposed to efficiently solve it. We also propose a distributed algorithm called LD (based on Lagrangian decomposition) to achieve a near-optimal solution with low computational and communication complexity, which can be used when the system is on a large scale. The simulation results show that our scheme can significantly improve the system's revenue.