In this paper, we study the problem of cooperative interference management inan OFDMA two-tier small cell network. In particular, we propose a novelapproach for allowing the small cells to cooperate, so as to optimize theirsum-rate, while cooperatively satisfying their maximum transmit powerconstraints. Unlike existing work which assumes that only disjoint groups ofcooperative small cells can emerge, we formulate the small cells' cooperationproblem as a coalition formation game with overlapping coalitions. In thisgame, each small cell base station can choose to participate in one or morecooperative groups (or coalitions) simultaneously, so as to optimize thetradeoff between the benefits and costs associated with cooperation. We studythe properties of the proposed overlapping coalition formation game and we showthat it exhibits negative externalities due to interference. Then, we propose anovel decentralized algorithm that allows the small cell base stations tointeract and self-organize into a stable overlapping coalitional structure.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm results in a notableperformance advantage in terms of the total system sum-rate, relative to thenoncooperative case and the classical algorithms for coalitional games withnon-overlapping coalitions.
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