Competition in Femtocell Networks: Strategic Access Policies in the Uplink

In emerging small cell wireless, each Femtocell Access Point (FAP) can either service its home subscribers exclusively (i.e., closed access) or open its access to accommodate a number of macrocell users so as to reduce cross-tier interference. In this paper, the authors propose a game-theoretic framework that enables the FAPs to strategically decide on their uplink access policy. They formulate a non-cooperative game in which the FAPs are the players that want to strategically decide on whether to use a closed or an open access policy in order to maximize the performance of their registered users.