2196 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 10, NO.
7, JULY 2011
Cognitive and Game-Theoretical
Radio Resource Management for
Autonomous Femtocells with QoS Guarantees
Shao-Yu Lien, Yu-Yu Lin, and Kwang-Cheng Chen, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—To successfully deploy femtocells overlaying the
Macrocell as a two-tier that had been shown greatly benefiting
communications quality in various manners, it requires to miti-
gate cross-tier interference between the Macrocell and femtocells,
and intra-tier interference among femtocells, as well as to
provide Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees. Existing solutions
therefore assign orthogonal radio resources in frequency and
spatial domains to each network, however, infeasible for dense
femtocells deployments. It is also difficult to apply centralized
resource managements facing challenges of scalability to the two-
tier. Considering the infeasibility of imposing any modification
on existing infrastructures, we leverage the cognitive radio
technology to propose the cognitive radio resource management
scheme for femtocells to mitigate cross-tier interference. Under
such cognitive framework, a strategic game is further developed
for the intra-tier interference mitigation. Through the concept of
effective capacity, proposed radio resource management schemes
are appropriately controlled to achieve required statistical delay
guarantees while yielding an efficient radio resources utilization
in femtocells. Performance evaluation results show that a consid-
erable performance improvement can be generally achieved by
our solution, as compared with that of state-of-the-art techniques,
to facilitate the deployment of femtocells.
Index Terms—Femtocells, interference mitigation, cognitive
radio technology, strategic game, statistical QoS guarantee,
OFDMA.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T O enable ubiquitous communications with increasing de-
mands on the support of high data rates, early experiences
in Macrocells deployments had shown the inefficiency of long
range communications, which motivate current wireless de-
ployment strategies keeping building infrastructures to shorten
distances between base stations (BSs) and mobile stations
(MSs). However, due to the high cost of this solution, the
development of a new class of users haphazardly deployed
BSs with smaller coverage is hastened. The network formed
Manuscript received May 1, 2010; revised August 29, 2010 and December
15, 2010; accepted March 17, 2011. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this paper and approving it for publication was S. Valaee.
S.-Y. Lien and Y.-Y. Lin are with the Graduate Institute of Communication
Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan (e-mail:
{d95942015, r97942063}@ntu.edu.tw).
K.-C. Chen is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Grad-
uate Institute of Communication Engineering, National Taiwan University,
Taipei 10617, Taiwan (e-mail: chenkc@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw).
This research is conducted under the “Wireless Broadband Communications
Technology and Application Project” of the Institute for Information Industry
which is subsidized by the Ministry of Economy Affairs of the Republic of
China, and is supported by National Science Council under contracts NSC98-
2221-E-002-065-MY3 and NSC99-2911-I-002-001.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2011.060711.100737
1536-1276/11$25.00 ⃝
c 2011 IEEE
The stand-alone femtocell
Macrocell
femto-MS Macro-MS
femto-BS femto-BS femto-MS
Femtocell
femto-MS Macro-MS
femto-BS
femto-MS Macro-BS Macro-MS
femto-BS
femto-MS
Macro-MS Macro-MS
Collocated
femtocells
Fig. 1. In the next generation wireless communications systems such as
LTE-Advanced, femtocells overlaying the Macrocell had been considered as
a mandatory technology to enhancing data rates. There are two types of
femtocells. A stand-alone femtocell locates far from other femtocells. On
the other hand, the coverage of a collocated femtocell highly overlaps with
that of other collocated femtocells.
by such a users deployed BS with merits of enhancing the
indoor received signal quality, reducing the burden of the
Macrocell, and enabling various user-specific applications [1]–
[4] is known as the femtocell. Overlaying the Macrocell as
a two-tier, the femtocell had been endorsed as a mandatory
technology in the next generation wireless communications
systems such as 3GPP Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-
Advanced) [5] and WiMAX (IEEE 802.16-2009) [6].
Due to the use of common radio resources in the two-tier
[5], [6], detractive interference may occur not only between
the femtocell and the Macrocell but also among femtocells
whose coverage areas are highly overlapped with each other
(collocated femtocells), as shown in Fig. 1. To avoid in-
terference, one typical solution is to divide entire available
spectrum into several frequency bands, then each femtocell
and the Macrocell utilize different frequency bands from
each other [7]. This deployment is referred to the “dedicated
channel” deployment in 3GPP [8]. However, the performance
of this solution is limited by the assigned bandwidth, which
makes this solution infeasible for the dense femtocells deploy-
ment where each femtocell can only utilize a very limited
bandwidth. An alternative solution is to adopt the spatial
domain frequency reuse [9], however, it is infeasible for
users deployed femtocells without an ideal planning. As a
result, a practical solution turns out to be the “co-channel”
deployment. That is, all femtocells and the Macrocell can
utilize entire available spectrum. To mitigate interference in
the co-channel deployment, the dynamic power adaptation in
LIEN et al.: COGNITIVE AND GAME-THEORETICAL RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR AUTONOMOUS FEMTOCELLS WITH QOS GUARANTEES
femtocells had been proposed for the system adopting the
code division multiple access (CDMA) [10]–[15] to combat
interference due to the near-far problem. Considering that
orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) had
been adopted by 3GPP LTE-Advanced and WiMAX, new
interference mitigation schemes are required [4]. In OFDMA,
the major cause of interference is that multiple cells (the
Macrocell and femocells) occupy the same radio resources
(subcarriers and OFDM symbols) simultaneously. To avoid
this situation, a cross-tier centralized radio resources allocation
had been proposed by [16]. In such a centralized scheme,
however, the potential high computational complexity and
a large amount of information exchanges create challenges
on providing scalability, and therefore it is infeasible to be
applied to the scenario with a large number of femtocells. As
a result, femtocells shall be able to “autonomously” mitigate
interference to/from the Macrocell as well as to/from other
collocated femtocells. In addition, femtocells are also required
to provide quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees while fully uti-
lizing radio resources [17], which had been recognized as es-
sential requirements to enable a new wireless technology [18],
[19]. Consequently, an effective radio resources management
scheme for femtocells is urgently needed to jointly resolve
three major challenges: (i) autonomous cross-tier and intra-tier
interference mitigation, (ii) QoS guarantees provisioning for
femtocells users, and (iii) fully radio resources exploitation.
To tackle above challenges, the cognitive radio technology
enabling a station to cognise and adapt to communications
environments so as to achieve the optimum overall network
performance [20]–[23] is considerably noted. Under the design
constraint of simplicity without imposing additional com-
plexities on current Macrocell protocols and operations, the
cognitive radio technology is well-suited for femtocells to treat
the Macrocell as a primary system [24]. Under this framework,
we propose that each femtocell performs periodical channel
sensing to identify the radio resources usage of the Macrocell.
By only utilizing radio resources identified as unoccupied by
the Macrocell, interference to/from the Macrocell (cross-tier
interference) can thus be mitigated.
With such a cognitive capability, the subsequent challenge
for collocated femtocells is that multiple collocated femtocells
may identify the same set of unoccupied radio resources.
Under this circumstance, how to efficiently share unoccupied
radio resources among collocated femtocells raises as a critical
issue. A similar problem also had been mentioned in [7],
which proposed that each collocated femtocells randomizes
the usage of unoccupied radio resources to alleviate interfer-
ence among collocated femtocells. This solution is effective
under the case that all collocated femtocells have an identical
demand. Unfortunately, this case does not generally hold. To
deal with collocated femtocells with diverse demands, each
collocated femtocell should further determine an appropriate
amount of unoccupied radio resources to utilize. It is further
desirable to reach the automation in a distributed way for
practical operations. Game theory is thus employed as the
foundation to facilitate our ultimate goal. Since it is not
feasible to distinguish priority among collocated femtocells,
no collocated femtocell can make the decision prior to that
of other collocated femtocells, which well motivates us to
2197
adopt the strategic game (that is, the one-shot game) to
develop the radio resources management scheme for intra-tier
interference. As a summary, we develop a strategic game for
collocated femtocells, by which each collocated femtocell can
autonomously determine an appropriate amount of unoccupied
radio resources to utilize. This decision is made by taking into
account of all possible decisions made by all collocated fem-
tocells. Consequently, our design enhances the performance in
more general situations, in addition to the special case that all
collocated femtocells are with the same demand.
To further provide QoS guarantees while fully exploiting
radio resources in femtocells, we make the use of the concept
of effective capacity. Effective capacity, introduced by Wu
and Negi [25], is a link-layer channel model specifying the
maximum constant arrival rate that can be supported by the
system while satisfying the given QoS requirement. Thus,
effective capacity exactly serves our purpose. By analyti-
cally deriving the effective capacity of proposed interference
mitigation schemes, we develop a systematic procedure to
control the sensing period and the radio resources allocation
for femtocells. Simulation results show that the performance
of the proposed solution outperforms that of existing solutions
and effectively supports smooth transmissions of real-time
voice and video streams in each femtocell.
In summary, after introducing the system model in Section
II, we present following accomplishments. To autonomously
mitigate interference to/from the Macrocell, the cognitive
radio resource management (CRRM) scheme for femtocells
is proposed in Section III. The CRRM comprises four steps.
Each stand-alone femtocells (a femtocell locates far from other
femtocells) should perform all steps of the CRRM to mitigate
cross-tier interference. In Section III, the effective capacity of
the CRRM is also derived. Under this cognitive framework, in
Section IV, the strategic game based radio resource manage-
ment (SGRRM) scheme is proposed for collocated femtocells,
which comprises three steps to replace Step 3 of the CRRM.
As a result, each collocated femtocells shall perform Step 1,
Step 2, Step 4 of the CRRM, and all steps of the SGRRM to
both mitigate cross-tier and intra-tier interference. In Section
IV, the effective capacity of the SGRRM is also derived.
Through effective capacities of the CRRM and the SGRRM,
a systematic procedure is proposed in Section V to control
the sensing period and the radio resources allocation for
each femtocell to provide statistical delay guarantees while
achieving a full radio resources utilization in each femtocell.
The performance evaluation results are provided in Section
VI, and this paper is concluded in Section VII.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
We consider the radio resources management problem
with multiple femtocells overlaying the Macrocell (Fig. 1).
Each femtocell is composed of a base station (femto-BS)
and multiple mobile stations (femto-MSs). The Macrocell is
composed of a base station (Macro-BS) and multiple mobile
stations (Macro-MSs). All femtocells and the Macrocell adopt
OFDMA and share all available spectrum (i.e., the co-channel
deployment). According to the deployed location, there are
two types of femtocells, stand-alone and collocated. A stand-
alone femtocell locates far from other femtocells. Therefore,
2198
TABLE I
I MPORTANT NOTATIONS UTILIZED IN THIS PAPER .
Notation Description
𝑀 Number of RBs in a frame
𝑇𝑅𝐵 Number of OFDM symbols in an RB
𝐵′ Buffer length
𝜁 Probability that the buffer is not empty
𝛿 Constant determined by arrival process and service process
EC (𝜃) Effective bandwidth
𝑀Macro Number of RBs occupied by the Macrocell
𝜂 RB allocation correlation probability (Macrocell)
𝜑 Fraction of correlated RBs allocation (Macrocell)
𝑙 Number of RBs utilized by a femtocell
𝜛𝑙 Defined by (11)
𝑀𝑎 Maximum number of RBs can be utilized by a collocated femtocell
𝑝 𝑙𝑠 Probability the 𝑠th collocated femtocell utilizing 𝑙𝑠 RBs
P Set of strategy profiles of all collocated femtocells
P∗ Set of optimum strategy profiles of all collocated femtocells
𝑞0 Probability that an RB is not utilized by any collocated femtocells
𝑥 Number of RBs utilized by multiple collocated femtocells
𝑌 Random variable of 𝑦
𝑋1 Random variable of the number of RBs utilized
by the first collocated femtocell
𝑈𝑙 Expected number of RBs without interference among 𝑙 RBs
𝐿 Maximum number of RBs that can be allocated to the femto-MS
Sensing period (Ts)
Sensing frame Data frame Data frame Sensing frame Data frame
... ...
RB
There are M RBs
in each frame
Fig. 2. The frame structure of the femtocell. The boundary of each frame
should align to that of the Macrocell.
a stand-alone femtocell only needs to mitigate interference
from the Macrocell. On the other hand, the coverage of a
collocated femtocell overlaps with that of other collocated
femtocells. Therefore, a collocated femtocell needs to mit-
igate interference both from the Macrocell and from other
collocated femtocells.
Considering that all femtocells and the Macrocell belong
to the same wireless system (e.g., LTE-Advanced), the frame
structure of the Macrocell and femtocells are identical and
boundaries of frames of femtocells should align to that of
the Macrocell [5]–[7]. To reduce the complexity of the radio
resources allocation, state-of-the-art OFDMA-based systems
typically allocate radio resources in the unit of “resource
block” (RB) [5], [6]. Denote the number of RBs in each frame
as 𝑀 . Each RB is composed of 𝐹𝑅𝐵 successive subcarriers
over 𝑇𝑅𝐵 OFDM symbols, as depicted in Fig. 2. Important
notations in this paper are summarized in Table I.
A. Power Control Considerations
In our femtocell model, power control is used to combat
the channel fading. We choose to adopt the truncated channel
inversion [26] as the power control scheme for femtocells, by
which the signal to interference and noise power ratio (SINR)
on each RB can be maintained at a required value, so that all
RBs in a frame can carry the same number of bits [26], except
some RBs suffering deep fades which are not utilized by the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 10, NO. 7, JULY 2011
Notation Description
𝐹𝑅𝐵 Number of subcarriers in an RB
𝐵 A threshold of the buffer length
𝜃 QoS exponent
𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 Delay bound
EC (𝜃) Effective capacity
𝑇𝑠 Sensing period
𝜌 Traffic load of the Macrocell
𝑀𝜂 Number of RBs with non-zero 𝜂 (Macrocell)
𝑛 Number of bits carried by an RB
E𝑙C (𝜃) Effective capacity of the femtocell utilizing 𝑙 RBs
𝑆 Number of collocated femtocells
𝑙𝑠 Number of RBs utilized by the 𝑠th collocated femtocell
p𝑠 Strategy profile of the 𝑠th collocated femtocell
P̂ Set of strategy profiles as a Nash equilibrium
𝒜 Set of Nash equilibria
𝑞1 Probability that an RB is utilized by one femtocell
𝑦 Number of RBs not utilized by any collocated femtocells
𝑀𝑠 Random variable of the number of RBs utilized
by the 𝑠th collocated femtocell
𝑗 Number of RBs utilized by femtocells without interference
𝜀 Delay bound violation probability
system. As a result, there is no difference in selecting different
RBs. This setting simplifies the problem of the RBs allocation,
... and as we can see in following sections, QoS requirements of
a femto-MS can be fulfilled if the femto-MS can be allocated
by an enough number of RBs without suffering interference.
In this paper, we say an RB without suffering interference if
this RB is only utilized by one Macrocell or femtocell.
B. Preliminary of Statistical QoS Guarantees and Effective
Capacity
The real-time services typically require bounded delays.
Due to the impact of time-varying fading channels, it had
been shown that providing deterministic QoS guarantees (that
is, the probability that the transmission delay violates the
delay requirement is zero) over the Rayleigh fading channel
is impossible [25]. As a result, a practical solution turns
out to provide the statistical QoS guarantees (the probability
that the transmission delay violates the delay requirement is
bounded by a required value). For this purpose, large deviation
theory [27], [28] provides that, for stationary arrival and
service processes under sufficient conditions, the probability
that the buffer length 𝐵 exceeds a certain threshold 𝐵 ′ decays
exponentially fast as the threshold 𝐵 ′ increases. That is,
′
Pr{𝐵 > 𝐵 ′ } ≈ 𝑒−𝜃𝐵 (1)
where 𝜃 is a positive constant called QoS exponent. When
delay is the main QoS metric of interests, an expression similar
to (1) is given by
Pr{𝐷𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 > 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 } ≈ 𝑒−𝜃𝛿𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 (2)
where 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 is the delay bound and 𝛿 is jointly determined by
the arrival process and the service process. From (2), it can
be observed that a small 𝜃 implies that the system can only
support a loose QoS requirement, while a large 𝜃 means that
a strength QoS requirement can be supported by the system.
LIEN et al.: COGNITIVE AND GAME-THEORETICAL RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR AUTONOMOUS FEMTOCELLS WITH QOS GUARANTEES
To provide statistical delay guarantees, the effective band-
width and the effective capacity serve significant foundations.
The effective bandwidth [27], [28], denoted by EB (𝜃), spec-
ifies the maximum constant service rate needed to serve the
given arrival process subject to a given 𝜃. On the other hand,
the effective capacity, denoted by EC (𝜃), is the duality of the
effective bandwidth, which specifies the maximum constant
arrival rate that can be supported by the system subject
to a given 𝜃 [25]. If 𝜃∗ can be found as the solution of
EB (𝜃∗ ) = EC (𝜃∗ ), 𝛿 can be obtained by [29]
𝛿 = EB (𝜃∗ ) = EC (𝜃∗ ). (3)
Consequently, the system can achieve the statistical delay
guarantee
∗
Pr{𝐷𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 > 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 } ≈ 𝑒−𝜃 𝛿𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥
. (4)
The effective capacity can be formally defined by [25]
( [ ])
Λ𝑐 (−𝜃) 1 ∑𝑡
EC (𝜃) ≜ − = − lim log 𝔼 𝑒−𝜃 𝑖=1 𝑅[𝑖] (5)
𝜃 𝑡→∞ 𝜃𝑡
∑
where 𝔼[⋅] denotes taking the mean value, 𝑡𝑖=1 𝑅[𝑖] is the
partial sum of the discrete-time stationary and ergodic service
process {𝑅[𝑖], 𝑖 = 1, 2, . . .} and
( [ ∑𝑡 ])
1
Λ𝑐 (𝜃) = lim ( ) log 𝔼 𝑒𝜃 𝑖=1 𝑅[𝑖] (6)
𝑡→∞ 𝑡
is a convex function differentiable for all real 𝜃. To achieve
statistical delay guarantees, approaches deriving the effective
bandwidth of real-time streams had been widely discussed
(e.g., the effective bandwidth of the voice traffic can be
obtained by the method proposed in [30]). However, the
effective capacity depends on the specific system design. We
therefore shall derive the effective capacities of the proposed
CRRM and the SGRRM so as to control the system to achieve
the required QoS requirements.
III. I NTERFERENCE M ITIGATION BETWEEN THE
F EMTOCELL AND THE M ACROCELL
Since femtocells (both stand-alone and collocated) suffer
interference from the Macrocell when femtocells utilize RBs
occupied by the Macrocell, each femto-BS shall avoid allo-
cating RBs occupied by the Macrocell to its femto-MSs. As a
result, the key idea of the cross-tier interference mitigation is
that each femto-BS autonomously estimates the RBs usage of
the Macrocell (that is, identifying which RB is occupied by
the Macrocell in a frame). Then, each femto-BS only allocates
unoccupied RBs to its femto-MSs. In LTE-Advanced, a femto-
BS inherently has the channel measurement capability. We
therefore leverage such capability to propose the CRRM as
follows.
Cognitive Radio Resource Management (CRRM):
1) The femto-BS periodically senses the channel to identify
which RB is occupied by the Macrocell. The sensing
period is 𝑇𝑠 frames and each channel sensing persists
for one frame, as depicted in Fig. 2. Thus, for the
femtocell, a frame is referred to the “sensing frame” if
the femto-BS performs channel sensing at that frame. On
the other hand, a frame is referred to the “data frame” if
the femto-BS does not perform channel sensing at that
2199
frame. The femto-BS can not perform data transmission
and reception within the sensing frame.
2) The femto-BS senses the received interference power on
each RB within the sensing frame.
a) If the received interference power on an RB ex-
ceeds a certain threshold, the RB is identified as
being occupied by the Macrocell.
b) Otherwise, the RB is unoccupied by the Macrocell.
3) In subsequent data frames, the femto-BS only allocates
unoccupied RBs sensed in the sensing frame to its
femto-MSs.
4) The femto-BS also extracts following parameters from
channel sensing: (i) the traffic load of the Macrocell, (ii)
the RBs allocation correlation probability of the Macro-
cell, and (iii) the fraction of correlated RBs allocation
of the Macrocell, which are detailed later.
In the CRRM, the reason that the femto-BS is responsible
for channel sensing, instead of femto-MSs, are two-fold. (i)
Performing channel sensing consumes power, it may not be
feasible for femto-MSs that are typically power limited. (ii)
If femto-MSs are adopted to perform channel sensing, the
femto-BS needs to allocate RBs to femto-MSs for the sensing
results report, which potentially wastes radio resources. Since
the received interference power had been adopted by 3GPP
LTE-Advanced as a mandatory sensing quantity of BSs [31],
[32], the proposed CRRM can be applied to LTE-Advanced
without any hardware modifications. In addition, the received
interference power can be in downlink or in uplink, for the
femtocell to mitigate interference from the Macro-BS to the
femto-MS in the downlink case, and interference from the
Macro-MS located within the coverage of the femtocell to the
femto-BS in the uplink case.
By the CRRM, the femto-BS considers that the RBs usage
of the Macrocell in the data frame is identical to that in the lat-
est sensing frame. If the Macrocell changes its RBs allocation
very frequently among frames, there could be estimation errors
on the RBs usage of the Macrocell. Therefore, a small 𝑇𝑠 can
decrease the estimation error and thus decrease the probability
of interference. However, channel sensing is an overhead,
since the femtocell can not perform data transmission and
reception within a sensing frame. A small 𝑇𝑠 implies that
more radio resources (more sensing frames) are used for
channel sensing. As a result, there is a tradeoff between 𝑇𝑠
and interference (or, a tradeoff between the radio resources
utilization efficiency and interference). A good tradeoff shall
provide statistical delay guarantees for femto-MSs while fully
utilizing radio resources. To achieve this goal, each femto-BS
shall appropriately control 𝑇𝑠 and the RBs allocation. Since
the effective capacity facilitates this control, we should derive
the effective capacity of the CRRM. For this purpose, the
femto-BS needs more information about the characteristic of
the RBs allocation in the Macrocell. That is, the Macro-BS
allocates RBs in a high or in a low correlation manner among
frames, which depends on the time-varying channel condition
of each Macro-MS, the connection time of each Macro-MS
and the scheduling algorithm adopted by the Macro-BS. To
capture this characteristic, the femto-BS is proposed to extract
following parameters from results of channel sensing. These
2200
parameters are also noted by LTE-Advanced [32].
Definition 1. Let 𝑀Macro be the number of RBs occupied by
the Macrocell in a frame, the traffic load of the Macrocell, 𝜌,
is defined by 𝜌 ≜ 𝑀Macro /𝑀 .
Definition 2. When an RB is occupied by the Macrocell
in a frame, the RB allocation correlation probability of the
Macrocell, 𝜂, is the probability that the Macrocell will still
occupy this RB in the subsequent frame.
Definition 3. Let 𝑀𝜂 be the number of RBs with non-zero 𝜂
in a frame, the fraction of correlated RBs allocation of the
Macrocell, 𝜑, is defined by 𝜑 ≜ 𝑀𝜂 /𝜌𝑀 .
To obtain these parameters, the femto-BS still only needs to
sense the received interference power on each RB, by which
the femto-BS can identify the traffic load of the Macrocell, 𝜌.
By further performing the time-domain correlation of channel
sensing results, 𝜂 and 𝜑 can be obtained. 𝜂 and 𝜑 capture
the correlation of the RBs allocation among frames in the
Macrocell. When both 𝜂 and 𝜑 are large, it implies that the
Macro-BS allocates RBs to Macro-MSs in a high correlation
manner among frames. On the other hand, when both 𝜂 and 𝜑
are small, it means that the Macro-BS allocates RBs to Macro-
MSs in a low correlation manner among frames. By obtaining
these parameters in Step 4 of the CRRM, we derive the
effective capacity of the CRRM by introducing the following
lemma.
Lemma 1. Considering that all RBs carry the same number of
bits (say n bits), the effective capacity of the femtocell utilizing
one RB without suffering interference is given by
1 ( ) RBs that had been identified, each collocated femtocell utilizes
E1C (𝜃) = − log 𝑒−𝑛𝜃
𝜃
Proof: Based on (5), we can obtain
( [ ])
1 ∑𝑡
E1C (𝜃) = − lim log 𝔼 𝑒−𝜃 𝑖=1 𝑅[𝑖] .
𝑡→∞ 𝜃𝑡
For the block fading channel wherein the service process
{𝑅[𝑖], 𝑖 = 1, 2, . . .} is uncorrelated, (8) can be rewritten as
1 ( ) RBs to alleviate intra-tier interference.
E1C (𝜃) = − log 𝑒−𝜃𝑅[𝑖] .
𝜃
Since each RB carries 𝑛 bits, 𝑅[𝑖] = 𝑛 for all 𝑖. We therefore
obtain (7) and complete the proof.
In (7), it is temporarily assumed that the RB utilized
by the femtocell suffers no interference. To generalize (7),
the effective capacity of the femtocell utilizing 𝑙 RBs with
potential interference due to the estimation error on the RBs
usage of the Macrocell is given by the following theorem.
Theorem 1. Considering that the CRRM is applied to the
femto-BS, the effective capacity (per frame) of the femtocell
that utilizes 𝑙 RBs in each data frame is given by
E𝑙C (𝜃) = 𝑙𝜛𝑙 E1C (𝑙𝜛𝑙 𝜃), (10)
where
∑min(𝑙,(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀) (1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀−𝑙
𝑇𝑠 − 1
𝑙 𝑔=0 𝑔C𝑙𝑔 C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀−𝑔
𝜛 = ⋅ (1 −
𝑇𝑠 (1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀
𝑙 ⋅ C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀
(11)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 10, NO. 7, JULY 2011
𝑎!
and C𝑎𝑏 ≜ 𝑏!(𝑎−𝑏)! .
Proof: Please see Appendix A.
With the facilitation of Theorem 1, the femto-BS can
control 𝑇𝑠 and the RBs allocation to achieve statistical delay
guarantees for each femto-MS. This part will be detailed in
Section V.
IV. I NTERFERENCE M ITIGATION AMONG C OLLOCATED
F EMTOCELLS
In this section, we continue the discussion on the inter-
ference mitigation among collocated femtocells. To mitigate
interference to/from the Macrocell, the CRRM should be
applied to each femtocell. However, based on the CRRM,
collocated femto-BSs may identify the same set of unoccupied
RBs. Without an effective scheme to share these unoccupied
RBs, collocated femtocells may suffer intra-tier interference
from other collocated femtocells. As mentioned in Section
I, although each collocated femtocell randomizing the RBs
utilization among unoccupied RBs can potentially alleviate
interference [7], the key factor impacting the performance
of this scheme is the maximum number of unoccupied RBs
that can be utilized by each collocated femtocell, especially
when each collocated femtocell has diverse demands. Under
the limitation that it is unavailable for collocated femtocells
to exchange information with each other based on the current
femtocell architecture in 3GPP, one typical solution is that all
collocated femtocells equally share unoccupied RBs. That is, if
there are 𝑆 collocated femtocells and there are 𝑀𝑎 unoccupied
(7) ⌊𝑀𝑎 /𝑆⌋ unoccupied RBs in the randomized manner. This
solution is referred as the “equal division”. However, the equal
division may not be effective when each collocated femtocell
(8) has diverse demands. In this section, we consequently develop
a game-theoretical solution for each collocated femtocell to (i)
autonomously determine the maximum number of unoccupied
RBs to utilize, and then (ii) randomize the utilization of these
(9)
A. The Strategic Game for Collocated Femtocells
Consider that there are 𝑆 collocated femtocells indexed by
𝑠 = 1, . . . , 𝑆. The 𝑠th collocated femtocell adopts the strategy
profile p𝑠 = {𝑝𝑙𝑠 }𝑙𝑠 =1,...,𝑀𝑎 , where 𝑝𝑙𝑠 is the probability that
𝑙𝑠 RBs among 𝑀𝑎 unoccupied RBs are utilized. Therefore,
∑ 𝑀𝑎
𝑙𝑠 =1 𝑝𝑙𝑠 = 1. Considering the infeasibility to distinguish
priority among collocated femtocells, each collocated femto-
cell takes the same action. That is, p1 = p2 =, . . . , = p𝑆 and
it is common knowledge for all collocated femtocells. From the
spirit of game theory, each collocated femtocell maximizes its
own payoff. The payoff is the expected number of RBs without
suffering interference. In the following lemma, the payoff of
the first collocated femtocell is formulated.
) Lemma 2. Given a set of strategy profiles P = {p𝑠 }𝑠=1,...,𝑆
that had been adopted by all collocated femtocells, the payoff
of the first collocated femtocell that utilizes 𝑙1 (unoccupied)
LIEN et al.: COGNITIVE AND GAME-THEORETICAL RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR AUTONOMOUS FEMTOCELLS WITH QOS GUARANTEES 2201

′
RBs is given by (ii) 𝑢𝑠 (𝑙𝑠 ; P̂) ≥ 𝑢𝑠 (𝑙𝑠 ; P̂) for all 𝑙𝑠 with 𝑝ˆ𝑙𝑠 > 0 and for all
𝑀𝑎 −max(𝑙2 ,...,𝑙𝑆 ) 𝑀𝑎 𝑙𝑠′ with 𝑝ˆ𝑙′𝑠 = 0.
∑ ∑ ∑ C𝑀
𝑥
𝑎 −𝑦
C𝑦𝑙1 −𝑥
𝑢1 (𝑙1 ; P) = (𝑙1 − 𝑥) Proof: This lemma follows the definition of the Nash
C𝑀
𝑙1
𝑎
𝑙𝑠 ,𝑠∕=1 𝑦=0 𝑥=0 equilibrium. Please refer to [33] for details.
𝑎 𝑦
⋅ C𝑀
𝑦 𝑞0 (1 − 𝑞0 )𝑀𝑎 −𝑦 𝑝𝑙2 ...𝑝𝑙𝑆 (12) The existence of the Nash equilibrium of the developed
∏𝑆 strategic game can be shown by adopting the foundation of
where 𝑞0 = 𝑠=2 (1 − 𝑀𝑙𝑠𝑎 ) is the probability that an RB is [34]. However, to resolve the issue of potentially multiple
not utilized by any collocated femtocell, 𝑥 is the number of equilibria, following lemma and proposition are adopted.
RBs utilized by more than one collocated femtocell and 𝑦 is
the number of RBs not utilized by any collocated femtocell. Lemma 4. Denote the expected total number of RBs utilized
by all collocated femtocells without suffering interference as
Proof: Let 𝑀𝑠 be the random variable of the number 𝔼[𝑗], which is given by
of RBs utilized by the 𝑠th collocated femtocell with the
𝑀𝑎 ∑
∑ 𝑆
∏
distribution p𝑠 . Let 𝑋1 be the random variable of the number 𝑎 𝑔
of RBs utilized by the first collocated femtocell and these RBs 𝔼[𝑗] = 𝑔C𝑀
𝑔 𝑞1 (1 − 𝑞1 )
𝑀𝑎 −𝑔
𝑝 𝑙𝑠 (16)
𝑔=1 𝑙1 ,...,𝑙𝑆 𝑠=1
are also utilized by other collocated femtocells. In this case,
we have where 𝑞1 is the probability that an RB is utilized by exactly
one collocated femtocell,
𝑢1 (𝑙1 ; P)
∑𝑆 𝑆
∏
𝑀𝑎
∑ ∑ 𝑙𝑠 𝑙𝑠′
𝑞1 = (1 − ) (17)
= (𝑙1 − 𝑥) Pr(𝑋1 = 𝑥∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 ) 𝑀𝑎 𝑀𝑎
𝑠=1 𝑠′ =1,𝑠′ ∕=𝑠
𝑙𝑠 ,𝑠∕=1 𝑥=0
⋅ Pr(𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 ) Proof: The proof can be obtained by the direct derivation.
𝑀𝑎
∑ ∑
= (𝑙1 − 𝑥) Pr(𝑋1 = 𝑥∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 ) Proposition 1. The best P∗ = {p∗𝑠 }𝑠=1,...,𝑆 can be obtained
𝑚𝑠 ,𝑠∕=1 𝑥=0 by comparing all Nash equilibria (P∗ ∈ 𝒜), where 𝒜 is the
⋅ 𝑝𝑙2 ...𝑝𝑙𝑆 . (13) set of all Nash equilibria, such that
To derive Pr(𝑋1 = 𝑥∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑠 ), let 𝑌 be P∗ = arg max 𝔼[𝑗]. (18)
𝒜
the random variable of the number of RBs not utilized by
any collocated femtocell. The conditional probability mass In the developed strategic game, all collocated femtocells
function of 𝑌 is given by take the same strategy and it is a common knowledge for all
collocated femto-BSs. Each collocated femto-BS can therefore
𝑎 𝑦
Pr(𝑌 = 𝑦∣𝑀2 = 𝑙2 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 ) = C𝑀
𝑦 𝑞0 (1 − 𝑞0 )
𝑀𝑎 −𝑦
. individually obtain (16) and (17) to select the best equilibrium
(14) from potentially multiple equilibria. To achieve (18), two pa-
Consequently, we have rameters are required, (i) the total number of unoccupied RBs
in a frame 𝑀𝑎 and (ii) the number of collocated femtocells
Pr(𝑋1 = 𝑥∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 )
𝑆. Each collocated femto-BS can obtain 𝑀𝑎 by the proposed
𝑀𝑎 −max(𝑙2 ,...,𝑙𝑆 )
∑ CRRM. It is also available for each collocated femto-BS to
= Pr(𝑋1 = 𝑥∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 , 𝑌 = 𝑦)
identify 𝑆 through the current femtocell architecture [35]. As
𝑦=0
a result, each collocated femto-BS can achieve (18) in the
⋅ Pr(𝑌 = 𝑦∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 )
𝑀𝑎 −max(𝑙2 ,...,𝑙𝑆 )
distributed manner.
∑
= Pr(𝑋1 = 𝑥∣𝑀1 = 𝑙1 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 , 𝑌 = 𝑦)
𝑦=0 B. The Strategic Game based Radio Resource Management
⋅ Pr(𝑌 = 𝑦∣𝑀2 = 𝑙2 , ..., 𝑀𝑆 = 𝑙𝑆 ) and the Corresponding Effective Capacity
𝑀𝑎 −max(𝑙2 ,...,𝑙𝑆 )
∑ C𝑥𝑀𝑎 −𝑦 C𝑦𝑙1 −𝑥 We then summarize above results to propose the SGRRM
= C𝑀 𝑎 𝑦
𝑦 𝑞0 (1 − 𝑞0 )
𝑀𝑎 −𝑦
(15)
𝑦=0
C𝑀
𝑙1
𝑎 under the framework of the CRRM. The SGRRM replaces
Step 3 of the CRRM, while other steps in the CRRM still
The proof is then completed by substituting (15) into (13). need to be performed by collocated femtocells.
Based on Lemma 2, the payoff of an arbitrarily collocated Strategic Game based Radio Resource Management
femtocell can be obtained likewise. In the strategic game, not (SGRRM):
all strategy profiles are feasible. A set of strategy profiles is
1) Each collocated femto-BS obtains the corresponding
feasible only if it is a Nash equilibrium [33]. In the following
strategy profile according to the developed strategic
lemma, we provide conditions for the developed strategic
game, by which each collocated femto-BS can obtain
game to reach a Nash equilibrium.
the maximum number of unoccupied RBs (denoted by
Lemma 3. A set of strategy profiles P̂ = {p̂𝑠 }𝑠=1,...,𝑆 is a 𝐿) available to be allocated to its femto-MSs.
Nash equilibrium if following conditions are satisfied for all 2) In each data frame, each collocated femto-BS can al-
collocated femtocells: locate 𝑙 unoccupied RBs (𝑙 ≤ 𝐿) to its femto-MSs,
(i) 𝑢𝑠 (𝑙𝑠 ; P̂) are equal for all 𝑙𝑠 with 𝑝ˆ𝑙𝑠 > 0. according to the actual demand.
2202 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 10, NO. 7, JULY 2011

TABLE II
3) These 𝑙 unoccupied RBs are allocated in the randomized S IMULATION PARAMETERS AND ASSUMPTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE
manner. EVALUATIONS

Based on the SGRRM, the effective capacity of the SGRRM Parameters Values/assumptions
is provided in the following theorem. Carrier frequency 2 GHz
System Bandwidth 20 MHz (100 RBs per frame)
Theorem 2. Considering that P∗ is adopted by all collocated Frame length 1 ms
femtocells, the effective capacity (per frame) of the 𝑠th collo- 𝐹𝑅𝐵 12 subcarriers
cated femtocell that utilizes 𝑙 RBs in the data frame is given 𝑇𝑅𝐵 7 OFDM symbols
Diameter of Macrocell coverage 500m
by Diameter of femtocell coverage 12m
Penetration loss of exterior wall, 𝐿𝑜𝑤 20dB
E𝑙C (𝜃) = 𝑈 𝑙 E1C (𝑈 𝑙 𝜃), (19) Penetration loss of interior wall, 𝐿𝑖𝑤 10dB
Path loss: Macro-BS←→femto-MS 15.3 + 37.6 log10 𝐷𝑚𝑓 + 𝐿𝑜𝑤 a
where 𝑈 𝑙 = 𝑢𝑠 (𝑙𝜛𝑙 ; P∗ ) is the expected number of RBs Path loss: femto-BS←→femto-MS 46.86 + 20 log10 𝐷𝑓 𝑓 + 𝐿𝑖𝑤 b
without suffering interference. Small scale and shadow fading According to [19]
Macro-BS TX power 46 dBm
Proof: Please see Appendix B. Femto-BS TX power 20 dBm in maximum,
truncated channel inversion
power control is adopted
V. T HE C ONTROL OF 𝑇𝑠 AND THE RB S A LLOCATION IN Modulation QPSK
THE F EMTOCELL Number of Macrocells 1
Threshold of the occupancy of RBs −65dBm interference
In this section, a systematic procedure is proposed to control Femto-MSs distribution Randomly deployed at the
the sensing period 𝑇𝑠 and the RBs allocation for the femtocell. coverage edge of each femtocell
Let 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 and 𝜀 be the delay bound and the acceptable delay Number of femto-MSs 5/femtocell, randomly select one
Deployment of stand-alone femtocells Randomly deployed at 50m to
bound violation probability. The procedure of the control of 150m far from the Macro-BS
𝑇𝑠 and the RBs allocation is proposed as follows. Number of stand-alone femtocells 20, randomly select one
The control of 𝑇𝑠 and the RBs Allocation: Number of clusters of 5, randomly select one
collocated femtocells
1) The femto-BS calculates the effective bandwidth EB (𝜃) Number of collocated femtocells 2 to 5
of the real-time traffic. in each cluster
2) To efficiently utilize radio resources, 𝑇𝑠 is initially set Deployment of clusters of Randomly deployed at 50m to
collocated femtocells 150m far from the Macro-BS
to a predetermined value. Minimum distances among , > 5m
3) The femto-BS first allocates 𝑙 = 1 RB to the femto-MS stand-alone femtocells between
in the data frame. a stand-alone femtocell and
a cluster of collocated
4) If the femtocell is a stand-alone femtocell, the femto-BS femtocells and among clusters
obtains the effective capacity by (10). If the femtocell of collocated femtocells
is a collocated femtocell, the femto-BS obtains the a 𝐷𝑚𝑓 (in m) is the distance between the Macro-BS and the femto-MS.
b 𝐷𝑓 𝑓 (in m) is the distance between the femto-BS and the femto-MS.
effective capacity by (19).
5) Find the solution of 𝜃 such that
EB (𝜃) = E𝑙C (𝜃) = 𝛿. (20)
Macrocell without suffering interference from other collocated
6) Derive the delay violation probability by femtocells.

Pr{Delay > 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 } = 𝑒−𝜃𝛿𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 (21)

a) If 𝑒 −𝜃𝛿𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥
> 𝜀, 𝑙 is determined by VI. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATIONS

min {𝑙}, 𝑠.𝑡. 𝑒−𝜃𝛿𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 ≤ 𝜀, (22)
1≤𝑙≤𝐿
where 𝐿 is the maximum number of RBs that can
be allocated to the femto-MS in a data frame.
b) If (22) is not satisfied, decrease 𝑇𝑠 by one if 𝑇𝑠 > 2
and repeat Step 4 to Step 6 to find the appropriate
𝑙 and 𝑇𝑠 such that (22) can be satisfied.
From our investigations (as we can see in next section),
an appropriately large 𝑇𝑠 improves the effective capacity.
This observation facilitates to further reduce the computational
complexity. By selecting an appropriate predetermined 𝑇𝑠 in
Step 2 (e.g., 24 frames), the effective capacity can be close
to the optimum value enough. Therefore, Step 6(b) can be
avoided to reduce the complexity. Furthermore, an appropriate
predetermined 𝑇𝑠 also facilitates all collocated femtocells to
align their sensing frames to that of each other. As a result,
each collocated femtocell can sense the RBs usage of the
The performance of the proposed solution is evaluated by
adopting the system parameters of 3GPP LTE-Advanced [19],
as listed in Table II. In the Macrocell, there are typically cer-
tain correlations on the RBs allocation among frames, which
can not be controlled by femtocells. Therefore, we should
evaluate the performance of the femtocell under different
correlations of the RBs allocation of the Macrocell. In this
performance evaluation, we consider the Macrocell allocating
RBs in a high correlation manner (that is, 𝜂 = 𝜑 = 0.8)
and in a low correlation manner (𝜂 = 𝜑 = 0.3). Please
note the selected case for the Macrocell allocating RBs in
a low correlation manner. In this case, when the Macrocell
is with a typically high traffic load (𝜌 = 0.8), there are
only ⌈0.3 × 0.3 × 0.8 × 100⌉ = 8 RBs that the Macrocell
will persistently occupy in each frame. In other words, the
Macrocell changes the occupation of remaining 72 RBs in
each frame. This is a very extreme case.
LIEN et al.: COGNITIVE AND GAME-THEORETICAL RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR AUTONOMOUS FEMTOCELLS WITH QOS GUARANTEES 2203

600 2000
CRRM, Macrocell allocates RBs in a high correlation manner
CRRM, Macrocell allocates RBs in a low correlation manner
1800 Randomize
550
1600
The Macrocell allocates RBs in a high
correlation manner
500 1400

Effective Capacity (bits/frame)

Effective Capacity (bits/frame)

CRRM, Ts=24 1200

450 CRRM, Ts=20
CRRM, Ts=16
CRRM, Ts=24 1000
CRRM, Ts=20
400 CRRM, Ts=16
Randomize 800

The Macrocell allocates RBs in a low 600

350
correlation manner
400

300
200

250 0
0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
QoS Exponent θ (1/bits) Number of unoccupied RBs utilized by the femtocell

Fig. 3. Effective capacities of the femtocell adopting the CRRM under Fig. 4. Effective capacities of the femtocell adopting the CRRM and the
different 𝑇𝑠 and the randomized scheme (𝑙 = 6, 𝜌 = 0.8). randomized scheme under different 𝑙 (𝑇𝑠 = 24, 𝜌 = 0.8, 𝜃 = 0.01).

A. Performance of the CRRM 1100

CRRM, Macrocell allocates RBs in a high correlation manner

Without the CRRM to estimate the RBs usage of the 1000

CRRM, Macrocell allocates RBs in a low correlation manner
Randomize

Macrocell, the interference mitigation scheme widely adopted

900
by the state-of-the-art OFDMA systems is to randomize the
RBs allocation in each frame. Such a randomized scheme is Effective Capacity (bits/frame) 800

similar to concept of the interleaved RBs allocation to combat 700

the block fading channel. In this performance evaluation, the

600
randomized scheme is selected as a benchmark.
In the CRRM, channel sensing is an overhead. In addition, 500

there could be potential errors on the estimation of the RBs 400

usage of the Macrocell. Therefore, the first thing required to

300
be investigated is whether it is effective to perform channel
sensing to mitigate interference. It can be observed from Fig. 200

3 that, when 𝑇𝑠 is appropriately selected, the CRRM outper- 100

0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
forms the randomized scheme when the Macrocell allocates Traffic load of the Macrocell (ρ)

RBs in a high correlation manner. Even in the extreme case

Fig. 5. Effective capacities of the femtocell adopting the CRRM and the
that the Macrocell allocates RBs in a low correlation manner, randomized scheme under different traffic load of the Macrocell 𝜌 (𝑇𝑠 = 24,
the performance of the CRRM is around the same level of 𝑙 = 6, 𝜃 = 0.01).
that of the randomized scheme. These results support the
effectiveness of channel sensing on the cross-tier interfer-
ence mitigation. Furthermore, the performance of the CRRM
can be enhanced when 𝑇𝑠 increases, while this performance the same RB also increases. However, since the femtocell
enhancement becomes marginal when 𝑇𝑠 keeps increasing. adopting the CRRM only utilizes the unoccupied RBs, the
Therefore, by selecting an appropriate 𝑇𝑠 (e.g., 24 frames), CRRM outperforms the randomized scheme.
the performance can be close to the optimum value. However,
a too large 𝑇𝑠 is not suggested, since it increases the error on To evaluate the capability on providing the statistical delay
estimations of 𝜌, 𝜂 and 𝜑, and the performance of the CRRM guarantee, Table III shows the simulation results of the CRRM
decreases. on the support of real-time voice and video transmissions.
Next, we investigate the performance of the femtocell For the voice traffic, a VoIP stream is considered. The arrival
utilizing different number of RBs in Fig. 4. Since the femtocell process of the VoIP is the well-known ON-OFF fluid model.
adopting the CRRM can identify the unoccupied RBs to The holding times in “ON” and “OFF” states are exponentially
utilize, interference can be alleviated, especially when the distributed with the means 6.1s and 8.5s, respectively. The data
number of RBs needed by the femtocell is large. rate of the “ON” state is 32Kbps. The delay bound is 20ms
In Fig. 5, the performance of the femtocell under different and the delay bound violation probability is 0.02. For the video
traffic loads of the Macrocell is investigated. It can be observed traffic, a high quality MPEG4 movie (Star War) is considered
that when the traffic load of the Macrocell increases, both [36]. The delay bound of the video traffic is 40ms and the
the effective capacities of the femtocell adopting the CRRM delay bound violation probability is 0.02. Table III shows the
and adopting the randomized scheme decrease. The reason is, effectiveness of the CRRM on the support of the statistical
when the number of RBs occupied by the Macrocell increases, delay guarantee, while the video traffic can not be supported
the probability that the femtocell and the Macrocell utilizing by the randomized scheme.
2204
TABLE III
S IMULATION RESULTS OF THE DELAY BOUND VIOLATION PROBABILITIES
OF V O IP AND HIGH QUALITY MPEG4 VIDEO . 𝜀 FOR BOTH V O IP AND
VIDEO ARE 0.02.
Traffic Viol. Prob. Viol. Prob. Viol. Prob. Viol. Prob.
of CRRM of CRRM of Randomize of Randomize
𝜂=𝜑=0.3 𝜂=𝜑=0.8 𝜂=𝜑=0.3 𝜂=𝜑=0.8
Star Wara 0.0199 0.0066 0.0464 0.0331
VoIPb 0.0012 0.0003 0.0013 0.0008
a For VoIP, 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 = 20ms.
b For video, 𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 = 40ms.
B. Performance of the SGRRM
We next evaluate the performance of the SGRRM. As
mentioned in Section IV, the equal division is effective for
collocated femtocells when all collocated femtocells have the
same demand. We select the equal division as the benchmark
and consider following two demand patterns in femtocells.
∙ Uniform: Considering the support of variable-bit-rate and
variable packet length traffic, the number of required RBs
in a femtocell may vary in each frame. To generally
capture the required RBs, it is considered that the number
of required RBs in each frame is uniformly distributed
over 1 to 𝑀𝑎 , where 𝑀𝑎 is the maximum number of RBs
that could be utilized by a collocated femtocell.
∙ Burst: To model the demand of the constant-bit-rate with
a burst arrival, the ON-OFF fluid model is adopted. The
means of the exponentially distributed holding times in
“ON” and “OFF” states are 1s and 19s. The numbers of
required RBs in “ON” and “OFF” states are 𝑀𝑎 and 1.
Since the SGRRM is under the framework of the CRRM,
the impact of sensing frames and potential errors on the
estimation of the RBs usage of the Macrocell have been taken
into considerations in following performance evaluations of
the SGRRM. We first investigate the performance of five
collocated femtocells with an identical demand. That is, five
collocated femtocells are with the uniform demand or all
with the burst demand. Since collocated femtocells with an
identical demand have the same performance, Fig. 6 shows
the performance of one of five collocated femtocells. It can
be observed that the performance of the SGRRM is around the
same level of that of the equal division. These results suggest
that the SGRRM cab be as effective as the equal division when
collocated femtocells have the same demand.
When collocated femtocells have different demands (two
collocated femtocells are with the uniform demand while
another three have the burst demand), it can be observed from
Fig. 7 that the performance of the SGRRM is considerably
improved as compared with that of the equal division for
femtocells with the uniform demand. On the other hand, the
performance of the SGRRM is around the same level of that of
the equal division for femtocells with the burst demand. The
reason of such performance improvement is that the SGRRM
takes all possible numbers of RBs that may be utilized by other
collocated femtocells into the consideration on the decision of
the maximum number of unoccupied RBs that can be utilized.
Fig. 8 shows the overall effective capacity of all collo-
cated femtocells (the sum of effective capacities of all collo-
cated femtocells), where each collocated femtocell randomly
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 10, NO. 7, JULY 2011
190
SGRRM, the collocated femtocell with uniform demand
SGRRM, the collocated femtocell with burst demand
180 Equal division, the collocated femtocell with uniform demand
Effective capacity of an individual collocated femtocell (bits/frame)
Equal division, the collocated femtocell with burst demand
170
160
150
140
130
120
110
100
90
10 15
Number of RBs that can be utilized by collocated femtocells
20
Fig. 6. Effective capacities of collocated femtocells adopting the SGRRM and
equal division. Five collocated femtocells are with the same demand. Since
collocated femtocells with the same demand have the same performance,
this figure only shows the performance of one of five collocated femtocells
(𝑀𝑎 = 5 RBs, 𝑇𝑠 = 24, 𝜌 = 0.8, 𝜃 = 0.01 and 𝜂 = 𝜑 = 0.8).
300
SGRRM, the collocated femtocell with uniform demand
SGRRM, the collocated femtocell with burst demand
Equal division, the collocated femtocell with uniform demand
Effective capacity of an individual collocated femtocell (bits/frame)
Equal division, the collocated femtocell with burst demand
250
200
150
100
50
10 15 20
Number of RBs that can be utilized by collocated femtocells
Fig. 7. Effective capacities of collocated femtocells adopting the SGRRM
and equal division. Five collocated femtocells are with different demands
(𝑀𝑎 = 5 RBs, 𝑇𝑠 = 24, 𝜌 = 0.8, 𝜃 = 0.01 and 𝜂 = 𝜑 = 0.8).
chooses one of two considered demands patterns. Results in
Fig. 8 suggest that the SGRRM outperforms the equal division
in more general situations, in addition to the case that all
collocated femtocells have the same demand.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we resolve following fundamental challenges
in OFDMA femtocells: (i) The proposed CRRM and the
SGRRM for femtocells enable autonomous cross-tier and
intra-tier interference mitigation, which provide the scalability
for a dense deployment. (ii) By analytically deriving effective
capacities of the CRRM and the SGRRM, the proposed sys-
tematic procedure controlling the sensing period and the RBs
allocation provide statistical delay guarantees while achieving
a fully radio resources utilization. Performance evaluation
results showed that the proposed CRRM outperforms the
randomized scheme to enable a smooth real-time voice and
video transmissions over the femtocell. The proposed SGRRM
also achieves a better performance than that of the equal
LIEN et al.: COGNITIVE AND GAME-THEORETICAL RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR AUTONOMOUS FEMTOCELLS WITH QOS GUARANTEES 2205

1200
SGRRM
Equal division Further considering the overhead of sensing frames, we can
obtain
min(𝑙,(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀) (1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀−𝑙
1100
𝑙 𝑇𝑠 − 1 ∑ C𝑙𝑔 C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀−𝑔
𝑙𝜛C = (𝑙 − 𝑔 ) (26)
Overall Effective Capacity (bits/frame)

𝑇𝑠 𝑔=0
(1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀
C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀
1000

as the average number of RBs without suffering interference

in each frame given that the femtocell utilizes 𝑙 RBs in each
900
data frame. By applying the results in [37], [38], the effective
capacity of the femtocell per data frame that the femtocell
800
utilizes 𝑙 RBs in each data frame without suffering interference
is given by
700
E𝑙C (𝜃) = 𝑙E1C (𝑙𝜃). (27)
2 3 4 5
𝑙
Number of co-located femtocells
By substituting 𝑙 in (27) by 𝑙𝜛C
in (26), we can obtain (10) as
Fig. 8. Overall effective capacity of all collocated femtocells. That is, the the effective capacity per frame of the femtocell that utilizes
sum of all effective capacities of all collocated femtocells (𝑀𝑎 = 20 RBs, 𝑙 RBs in each data frame.
𝑇𝑠 = 24, 𝜌 = 0.8, 𝜃 = 0.01 and 𝜂 = 𝜑 = 0.8).

division in more general situations, in addition to the case
all collocated femtocells with an identical demand. Yielding
a limited complexity and imposing no impacts on the state-
of-the-art femtocell architecture, the proposed solution can be
smoothly applied to 3GPP LTE-Advanced femtocells to serve
urgent needs in the standardization progress.
A PPENDIX A
T HE P ROOF OF T HEOREM 1
Due to the potential estimation error on the RBs usage of
the Macrocell, we need to derive the probability that there
are 𝑔 RBs suffering interference among 𝑙 RBs utilized by the
femtocell in the data frame. For this purpose, we can divide
RBs occupied by the Macrocell into two classes: (i) There are
𝜂𝜑𝜌𝑀 RBs whose allocations are the same in each frame. (ii)
There are (1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀 RBs whose allocations certainly change
(1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀
in each frame. Therefore, there are C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀 possibilities of
the RBs arrangement of the Macrocell in each frame. In a data
frame, the femto-BS only allocates RBs sensed as unoccupied
in the sensing frame to the femto-MS. Therefore, there are
(1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀−𝑙
C𝑙𝑔 C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀−𝑔 possibilities that there are 𝑔 RBs suffering
interference among 𝑙 RBs utilized by the femtocell. Therefore,
the probability that there are 𝑔 RBs suffering interference
among 𝑙 RBs utilized by the femtocell in the data frame is
(1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀−𝑙
C𝑙𝑔 C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀−𝑔
(1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀
C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀
Since the maximum value of 𝑔 is min(𝑙, (1 − 𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀 ), the
expected value of 𝑔 is
min(𝑙,(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀)
∑ C𝑙𝑔 C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀−𝑔
𝑔 (1−𝜂𝜑𝜌)𝑀
𝑔=0
Therefore, among 𝑙 RBs utilized by the femtocell, the expected
number of RBs without suffering interference in each data
frame is
min(𝑙,(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀)
∑ C𝑙𝑔 C(1−𝜂𝜑)𝜌𝑀−𝑔
𝑙−
𝑔=0
A PPENDIX B
T HE P ROOF OF T HEOREM 2
When a collocated femtocell utilizes 𝑙 RBs, due to the
potential estimation error on the RBs usage of the Macrocell,
the expected number of RBs without suffering interference
from the Macrocell per frame is 𝑙𝜛𝑙 . By further applying
the SGRRM, the mean number of RBs without suffering
interference from the Macrocell nor from other collocated
femtocells is thus
𝑢𝑠 (𝑙𝜛𝑙 ; P∗ ) = 𝑈 𝑙 . (28)
By substituting (28) into (27), we can obtain (19).
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Shao-Yu Lien received the B.S. degree in Electri-
cal Engineering from National Taiwan Ocean Uni-
versity, Taiwan, in 2004, and the M.S. degree in
communications engineering from National Cheng
Kung University, Taiwan, in 2006. He is currently
working toward his Ph.D. degree in the Graduate
Institute of Communication Engineering, National
Taiwan University, Taiwan. He received IEEE ICC
2010 Best Paper Award and his research interests
include cognitive/autonomous technologies and sta-
tistical scheduling in wireless systems.
Yu-Yu Lin received the B.S. degree in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science Honors Program
from National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Tai-
wan, in 2008, and the M.S. degree in communica-
tion engineering from National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, in 2010. His current research in-
terests include cognitive radio networks and MAC
protocol analysis.
Kwang-Cheng Chen received the B.S. degree from
National Taiwan University in 1983, and M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from University of Maryland, College
Park in 1987 and 1989, all in Electrical Engineering.
From 1987 to 1998 he was with SSE, COMSAT,
the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and
National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan,
working on mobile communications and networks.
He is a Distinguished Professor and director of the
Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering
and the Communication Research Center of National
Taiwan University. He has received numerous awards and honors, including
IEEE Fellow, the ISI Classic Citation Award and IEEE ICC 2010 Best Paper
Award. His research interests include wireless communications and network
science.