Cooperative game theoretic load balancing scheme with admission control in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

A load-balancing scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs based on cooperative game theory is presented. A coalition among the access points (APs) with overlapping coverage is formed to share the network load through a game. Firstly, the candidate APs submit their load-competing strategies (i.e., the amount of user traffic they can admit in an AC/game period) to the control AP. Secondly, the control AP solves the game by the method of shapley value, which is the maximum traffic allocated to each AP in an AC/game period. Finally, the game is repeated periodically to distribute the traffic load among the APs. Simulation results show that the proposed game can balance the network load effectively compared with the IEEE 802.11 standard balancing solution.