Delay-Bounded Priority-Driven Resource Allocation for Two-Tier Macrocell/Femtocell Downlink

Femtocell is an efficient solution for mobile operators to expand indoor coverage and increase network capacity. In this paper, we study the downlink resource allocation problem of two-tier macrocell-femtocell networks. We first formulate the problem as a Mixed Integer Non-Linear Program (MINLP) which aims to maximize the capacity of clustered femtocell networks subject to hard delay constraints of flows with different priorities. Next, we apply Stochastic Network Calculus (SNC) to transforming the delay constraints into alternative minimum capacity requirements, and propose a resource allocation algorithm called S-SAPCS to solve the MINLP. Simulation results show that the proposed S-SAPCS algorithm has near-optimal performance. Moreover, it is able to exploit the statistical multiplexing gain among multiple flows.