Coalitional game-based WiFi offloading algorithm in heterogeneous networks

Aiming at the coexistence of cellular network and wireless fidelity(WiFi) network, a coalitional game-based WiFi offloading algorithm in heterogeneous networks is proposed. Firstly, this paper defines the user fairness utility function that comprehensively considers the user communication rate, cost and delay. Then, the coalitional game model including two types of coalitions is constructed. To control the transfer of users among coalitions, a coalition transfer criterion that simultaneously improves the user's individual utility and the total system utility is proposed. In addition, this paper presents a channel allocation scheme that ensures full utilization of system resources to maximize the total utility of the system. The simulation results show that the proposed offloading algorithm can reasonably utilize the resources of cellular network and WiFi network, and improve the utility of users and system.