Cooperative Infrastructure and Spectrum Sharing in Heterogeneous Mobile Networks

To accommodate the ever-growing traffic load and bandwidth demand generated by mobile users, mobile network operators (MNOs) need to frequently invest in high spectral efficiency technologies and increase their hold of spectrum resources; MNOs have then to weigh between building individual networks or entering into network and spectrum sharing agreements. We address here the problem of radio access network and spectrum sharing in 4G mobile networks by focusing on a case when multiple MNOs plan to deploy small cell base stations in a geographical area in order to upgrade their existing network infrastructure. We propose two cooperative game models (with and without transferable utility) to address the proposed problem: for given network (user throughput, MNO market, and spectrum shares) and economic (coalition cost and mobile data pricing model) settings, the proposed models output a cost division policy that guarantees coalition (sharing agreement) stability.