Interference management for multimedia femtocell networks with coalition formation game

Recently, the multimedia content delivery has replaced the traditional voice communication as the major source of traffic in wireless networks. The deployment of femtocells is promising in satisfying the requirements of these multimedia applications if the interference among the femtocell access points (FAPs) is well-managed. In this paper, we study the interference management problem of the FAPs in a cooperative multimedia femtocell network. We consider the network setting where the players (i.e., the FAPs) can coordinate their transmissions to reduce the level of interference within a coalition. We first formulate the interference management problem as a coalition formation game in partition form with negative externalities, where the payoff of a player depends on actions of other players in the same coalition and in different coalitions. Based on the solution concept of recursive core in coalitional games, we propose an efficient coalition formation algorithm, RECORD, to achieve a final stable coalition structure. Simulation results show that the RECORD algorithm results in a substantially higher flow throughput and aggregate utility than some previously proposed scheduling algorithms.