Backhaul-constrained optimization for hybrid access small cells

In this paper, we investigate the limited-capacity backhaul's impact on small cell holders' (SHs') utilities and the mobile network operator's (MNO's) net revenue under a refunding framework. SHs are reluctant to share accesses with guest users due to selfish nature. To advocate better resource utilization, the MNO refunds SHs to motivate hybrid access as incentives. We model the interactions between the MNO and SHs as a Stackelberg game: in Stage I, the MNO refunds SHs and we propose a lookup table approach to decide individualized refunding and interference temperature constraints to different SHs; in Stage II, SHs admit guest users and we propose a near-optimal two-phase guest user admission algorithm where guest users are gradually admitted in terms of the minimum increment of sum-log power. Simulation results show that under the limited-capacity backhaul, a higher refunding can increase SHs' utilities while decrease the MNO's net revenue. Hence, the MNO implicitly controls the number of admitted guest users through individualized refunding to maximize its net revenue.