Distributed Coalition Formation and Resource Allocation in Cognitive LTE Femto-cells

This chapter investigates resource allocation in a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. Users form coalitions, each exploiting resources in a particular femto-cell, while occupying optimal resources in the sense that total network throughput is maximized. Users in each cell collaborate to increase network throughput and simultaneously attempt to increase their own payoffs subject to a fairness criterion. Payoffs to the users are defined as the monetary equivalent of the individual users’ achievable throughput in the specified coalition structure. A distributed game-theoretic resource allocation mechanism is studied whereby users autonomously decide which sub-channel in which coalition to join. It is proved that if each user operates according to the proposed algorithm, the sum throughput of all links converges almost surely to its maximum feasible value.