User Satisfaction-Aware WiFi Offloading in Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract

We consider downlink WiFi offloading in a heterogeneous network consisting of one LTE base station (BS) and multiple overlaid WiFi access points (AP) to maximize the user satisfaction of the whole system. Two constraints are considered to guarantee the rate promotion of the offloaded users and less impact on WiFi networks. Furthermore, the resource block (RB) reallocation after offloading is also taken into account. In order to solve the combinatorial optimization problem, we first propose the RB allocation algorithm to reallocate the RBs left by offloaded users. Then, we adopt the best response (BR) algorithm based on game-theoretic approach to obtain the optimal offloading user set. Numerical results show that the proposed WiFi- offloading model can significantly improve the user satisfaction of the whole system, and the BR algorithm can converge to the optimal solution same as the exhaustive search algorithm through several iterations.