Energy-Saving Analysis in Cellular–WLAN Cooperative Scenarios

This paper addresses scenarios where cellular mobile subscribers implement a cooperative content-sharing service by using short-range radio communications in a wireless local area network (WLAN) and benefit from this situation to reduce the energy consumption. A central entity acts as a coordinator by identifying the data shares to be downloaded by each cooperating user to guarantee fairness and stability of the cooperative downloading process. The intended objective is achieved by carefully modeling the energy consumption on the WLAN radio links and by exploiting the proposed model within the framework of a coalitional game triggered by the coordinator. A performance assessment analysis confirms the expected gains achievable by the cooperative group of users.