Collaborative Sub-Channel Allocation in Cognitive LTE Femto-Cells: A Cooperative Game-Theoretic Approach

In this paper, formation of stable coalitions of users, each exploiting resources in a femto-cell, and the resource allocation in each femto-cell is investigated in a UMTS long term evolution (LTE) network. We study a downlink scenario where users collaborate to increase network throughput and, simultaneously, attempt to increase their own payoffs. Payoffs to the users are defined as the monetary equivalent of the individual users' achievable throughput in the specified coalition structure. A distributed game-theoretic resource allocation mechanism is developed whereby users autonomously decide which sub-channel in which coalition to join. If each user operates according to the proposed algorithm, the sum throughput of all links converges with probability one to its maximum feasible value.