Future wireless networks are expected to be highly heterogeneous, with the co‐existence of macrocells and small cells as well as the provisioning for device‐to‐device communication. In such heterogeneous and multi‐tier systems, centralized radio resource allocation and interference management schemes will not be scalable. Therefore, distributed resource allocation schemes will need to be designed. However, designing such distributed schemes is one of the fundamental research challenges for 5G multi‐tier cellular wireless networks. After a brief overview of 5G cellular systems, this chapter highlights three novel approaches that can be used to solve the distributed‐resource allocation problems in future heterogeneous networks. Specifically, we utilize the concepts of stable matching, factor‐graph‐based message passing, and distributed auctions and show their effectiveness in obtaining distributed solutions to the resource allocation problem. To this end, a brief qualitative comparison in terms of performance metrics, such as complexity, convergence, and signaling overhead, is presented.