Base Station Association Game in Multi-Cell Wireless Networks (Special Paper)

• Published in: 2008 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference pp. 1616 - 1621
• Main Authors: Libin Jiang, Parekh, S., Walrand, J.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.2008
• Subjects: Base stations; Communications Society; Computer science; Femtocell networks; Physical layer; Protocols; Resource management; System performance; Throughput; Wireless networks
• ISBN: 1424419972; 9781424419975
• ISSN: 1525-3511
• DOI: 10.1109/WCNC.2008.289

We consider a multi-cell wireless network with a large number of users. Each user selfishly chooses the Base Station (BS) that gives it the best throughput (utility), and each BS allocates its resource by some simple scheduling policy. First we consider two cases: (1) BS allocates the same time to its users; (2) BS allocates the same throughput to its users. It turns out that, combined with users' selfish behavior, case (1) results in a single Nash Equilibrium (NE), which achieves system-wide Proportional Fairness. On the other hand, case (2) results in many possible Nash Equilibria, some of which are very inefficient. Next, we extend (1) to the case where the users have general concave utility functions. It is shown that the if each BS performs intra- cell optimization, the total utility of all users is maximized at NE. This suggests that under our model, the task of joining the ";correct"; BS can be left to individual users, leading to a distributed solution.