Energy-Efficient Spectrum Sharing and Power Allocation in Cognitive Radio Femto-cell Networks

Both cognitive radio and femtocell have been considered as promising techniques in wireless networks. However, most of previous works are focused on spectrum sharing and interference avoidance, and the energy efficiency aspect is largely ignored. In this paper, the authors study the energy efficiency aspect of spectrum sharing and power allocation in heterogeneous cognitive radio networks with femtocells. To fully exploit the cognitive capability, they consider a wireless network architecture in which both the macrocell and the femtocell have the cognitive capability. They formulate the energy-efficient resource allocation problem in heterogeneous cognitive radio networks with femtocells as a Stackelberg game.