Abstract
Small-cells deployed in licensed spectrum can expand wireless service to low mobility users, which potentially reduces the demand for macro-cellular networks with wide-area coverage. Introducing such heterogeneity also makes network resource allocation more complicated. To understand these challenges and tradeoffs we present a two-tier heterogeneous wireless network model with two types of users: mobile users that can only connect to macro-cells; and fixed users that can associate with either macro-cells or small-cells. We study pricing strategies and bandwidth allocation across macro- and small-cells, assuming both monopoly and competitive Service Providers (SPs). For a monopoly SP, we characterize the revenue-maximizing prices and bandwidth allocations. We then consider a competitive scenario, and we show the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium. The possible Nash equilibria for different system parameters are sorted into four categories corresponding to whether or not different SPs assign bandwidth to the macro- and/or small-cells. We also study the allocations that maximize social welfare. For the competitive scenario, we characterize the conditions under which the optimal social welfare is obtained in equilibria as the number of SPs tends to infinity. Case study examples and numerical results illustrate the corresponding pricing and bandwidth allocations.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 9146379 |
| Pages (from-to) | 2299-2308 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2020 |
Funding
This work was supported in part by the NSF under Grant 1343381. This work was presented in part at the 2013 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA and the 2015 IEEE INFOCOM Workshop on Smart Data Pricing, Hong Kong. Manuscript received August 25, 2018; revised January 31, 2020; accepted July 3, 2020; approved by IEEE/ACM TRANSACTIONS ON NETWORKING Editor S. Shakkottai. Date of publication July 22, 2020; date of current version October 15, 2020. This work was supported in part by the NSF under Grant 1343381. This work was presented in part at the 2013 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA and the 2015 IEEE INFOCOM Workshop on Smart Data Pricing, Hong Kong. (Corresponding author: Cheng Chen.) Cheng Chen was with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60201 USA. He is now with the Next Generation and Standards Group, Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR 97124 USA (e-mail: [email protected]).
Keywords
- Bandwidth allocation
- Game theory
- HetNet
- Network economics
- Pricing
- Service competition
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Computer Science Applications
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering