A Non-Cooperative Game Approach for Bandwidth Allocation in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

One of the most important features of the evolving Fourth Generation (4G) wireless communication system is heterogeneous wireless access in which users could connect to several wireless access networks simultaneously. The new feature brings new challenges for the bandwidth allocation (BA) among heterogeneous networks. A non-cooperative bandwidth allocation game (NCBAG) algorithm for heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed in this paper. A BA problem is modeled as a non-cooperative game, and formulated to maximize the total utility of different networks. The existence of Nash equilibrium is verified for the proposed game model. The utility functions are developed for different applications to avoid assigning too much bandwidth to single user. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme can not only achieve high utility, but also reduce the blocking probability within a few steps of iteration.