Power Control via Stackelberg Game for Small-Cell Networks

In this paper, power control for two-tier small-cell networks in the uplink is investigated. We formulate the power control problem as a Stackelberg game, where the macrocell user equipment (MUE) acts as the leader and the small-cell user equipments (SUEs) as the followers. To reduce the cross-tier and co-tier interference and also the power consumption of both the MUE and SUEs, we propose to impose a set of costs on their transmit powers and optimize not only the transmit rate but also the transmit power. The corresponding optimization problems are solved by two-layer iterations. In the inner iteration, the SUEs compete with each other and their optimal transmit powers are obtained through iterative computations. In the outer iteration, the MUE’s optimal transmit power is obtained in a closed form based on the transmit powers of the SUEs through proper mathematical manipulations. We prove the convergence of the proposed power control scheme, and also theoretically show the existence and uniqueness of the Stackelberg equilibrium (SE) in the formulated Stackelberg game. Simulation results show great improvement of the proposed power control scheme especially for the MUE.