Differentiated-pricing based power allocation in dense femtocell networks

Femtocells, combined with orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), can improve cellular coverage and offload traffics from existing macrocells. However, the co-channel deployment of femtocells is still facing challenges arising from potentially severe co-channel interference in dense femtocells. In this paper, we investigate the uplink power allocation problem in dense deployed femtocells. We first model the uplink power allocation in femtocells as a non-cooperative game, where co-channel interference is taken into account in maximizing the femtocell capacity and uplink femto-to-femto interference is alleviated by charging each femto user a price proportional to the signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR). Based on the non-cooperative game, we then devise a distributed power allocation algorithm with differentiated pricing update. Simulation results show that the proposed power allocation algorithm is not only able to provide improved capacities for femtocells, but also can improve users' fairness, as compared with existing unpriced water filling power allocation algorithm.