A game-theoretic framework for joint base station and resource selection in LTE heterogeneous networks

In the present paper, a self-organization scheme for joint base station and resource block selection in an orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) cellular network is proposed. Inspired by the cognitive radio technology, each mobile node selects the most appropriate base station and resource blocks for uplink transmission in a decentralized manner in order to improve the throughput performance and manage the interference. A utility function is defined for each mobile node, which takes into account the cross- and co-tier interference, and incentive to choose the base station based on the link quality. Such a self-organization scheme can be modeled as a potential game, which is guaranteed to converge to a Nash equilibrium. The simulation results show that the proposed self-organization scheme facilitates the improvement of the system capacity in LTE heterogeneous networks by offloading the macrocell traffic and mitigate the cross- and co-tier interference.