Towards a crowdsourcing-based transmission paradigm in heterogeneous networks

Heterogenous network (HetNet) is a promising solution to meet an ever-increasing demand of wireless applications. However, it is a significant challenge for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to deploy HetNet at a large scale due to expensive Operating and Capital Expenditure (OPEX and CAPEX). To address this issue, this paper proposes a new network paradigm where potential small cell sites are encouraged to participate in facilitating HetNet deployment. This idea is inspired by the emerging phenomena of crowdsourcing, a distributed problem-solving approach tapping into the potential of a large and open crowd for a specific goal. In the proposed scheme, we let Donor eNB (DeNB) of existing marco cell be a crowdsourcers who would announce some transmission tasks to potential distributed small cell sites (belonging to individual or third-party community), when the existing network cannot shoulder users requirements. As for the recruited small cell sites, they help the DeNB through relay transmission mode. In order to stimulate more third-party small cell participating in such a paradigm, we proposed an incentive mechanism by using game theory. Moreover, if the serviced UE still cannot be reached after one-hop, we allow those involved small cell sites to play as crowdsourcers, and recruit more potential sites into relay transmission, until the transmission is completed. Extensive simulations are conducted to not only demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed transmission paradigm, but also validate the correctness of the proposed incentive mechanisms.