  The deployment of underlay small base stations (SBSs) is expected to
significantly boost the spectrum efficiency and the coverage of next-generation
cellular networks. However, the coexistence of SBSs underlaid to an existing
macro-cellular network faces important challenges, notably in terms of spectrum
sharing and interference management. In this paper, we propose a novel
game-theoretic model that enables the SBSs to optimize their transmission rates
by making decisions on the resource occupation jointly in the frequency and
spatial domains. This procedure, known as interference draining, is performed
among cooperative SBSs and allows to drastically reduce the interference
experienced by both macro- and small cell users. At the macrocell side, we
consider a modified water-filling policy for the power allocation that allows
each macrocell user (MUE) to focus the transmissions on the degrees of freedom
over which the MUE experiences the best channel and interference conditions.
This approach not only represents an effective way to decrease the received
interference at the MUEs but also grants the SBSs tier additional transmission
opportunities and allows for a more agile interference management. Simulation
results show that the proposed approach yields significant gains at both
macrocell and small cell tiers, in terms of average achievable rate per user,
reaching up to 37%, relative to the non-cooperative case, for a network with
150 MUEs and 200 SBSs.
