A Cooperative Game Framework for Bandwidth Allocation in 4G Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

One of the most important features of the evolving fourth generation (4G) wireless networks is the capability of a mobile station to connect to several wireless access networks simultaneously. This introduces new challenges in bandwidth allocation among mobiles since the load characteristics of different networks must be taken into account to design efficient resource allocation algorithms. In this paper, we present bandwidth allocation and admission control algorithms based on bankruptcy game which is a special type of an N-person cooperative game. A coalition among the different wireless access networks is formed to offer bandwidth to a new connection. The stability of the allocation is analyzed by using the concept of the core and the amount of allocated bandwidth to a connection in each network is obtained by using Shapley value. Subsequently, an admission control algorithm is proposed. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the behaviors of the proposed algorithms.