Traffic Offloading and Exchange of Service Schemes in Wireless Network Architectures

The proliferation of mobile internet access poses new challenges to wireless service providers as the capacity growth of their networks cannot cope with the rate of increase of mobile wireless traffic. Alternate means are considered to deal with the  excessive traffic demand, that exploit  the proliferation of wireless networks in unlicensed parts of the spectrum as well as of handheld devices with multiple radio interfaces. Traffic off-loading from the cellular network to a wifi access point is possible for mobile users with wireless interfaces for both networks. We will present a scheme where operators may gain access to wifi access point networks and negotiate with their owners permission to redirect mobile users from the cellular network to the wifi access point within range. That scheme is based on a double auction mechanism that allows both the cellular operators and the access point owners that  seek the most beneficial arrangements for themselves to reach an agreement for traffic offloading. In an alternate approach, a mobile user A may gain internet access when a user B with cellular internet connection is willing to relay A's traffic received through a direct link between A and B. User B is motivated to do that spending some of its capacity and bandwidth in anticipation of reciprocity in the future. We will present an incentives mechanism that encourages user participation in such crowd-sourced internet connectivity provision. Finally we will consider an abstract resource sharing model where nodes exchange resources with their neighbors with the objective to maximize their own benefit. For a network with arbitrary topology and bidirectional links will show that there is a utility allocation that is socially fair and at the same time it is the unique equilibrium point of a coalition game that captures the exchange interactions of the users.