Abstract: Apparatus and methods are disclosed that provide various incentive schemes for owners of low-power base stations to allow others nearby to use their base station, enabling offloading of some users from a nearby macrocell, thus helping improve overall network performance. For example, a “win-win” scenario might exist when a sharing opportunity at a low-power base station overlaps with a sharing opportunity at the neighboring macrocell. During this overlap, when the low-power base station provides access to its air interface to one or more UEs outside of a set of UEs associated with the low-power base station, an incentive credit may be received. Incentive credits can take various forms, and in some examples, may be in an amount that is a function of an amount of contribution to the network resulting from the provision of access to the air interface.

Abstract: Apparatus and methods are disclosed that provide various incentive schemes for owners of low-power base stations to allow others nearby to use their base station, enabling offloading of some users from a nearby macrocell, thus helping improve overall network performance. For example, a “win-win” scenario might exist when a sharing opportunity at a low-power base station overlaps with a sharing opportunity at the neighboring macrocell. During this overlap, when the low-power base station provides access to its air interface to one or more UEs outside of a set of UEs associated with the low-power base station, an incentive credit may be received. Incentive credits can take various forms, and in some examples, may be in an amount that is a function of an amount of contribution to the network resulting from the provision of access to the air interface.