Controlled Matching Game for Resource Allocation and User Association in WLANs

In multi-rate IEEE 802.11 WLANs, the traditional user association based on the strongest received signal and the well known anomaly of the MAC protocol can lead to overloaded Access Points (APs), and poor or heterogeneous performance. Our goal is to propose an alternative game-theoretic approach for association. We model the joint resource allocation and user association as a matching game with complementarities and peer effects consisting of selfish players solely interested in their individual throughputs. Using recent game-theoretic results we first show that various resource sharing protocols actually fall in the scope of the set of stability-inducing resource allocation schemes. The game makes an extensive use of the Nash bargaining and some of its related properties that allow to control the incentives of the players. We show that the proposed mechanism can greatly improve the efficiency of 802.11 with heterogeneous nodes and reduce the negative impact of peer effects such as its MAC anomaly. The mechanism can be implemented as a virtual connectivity management layer to achieve efficient APs-user associations without modification of the MAC layer

The Uplink Capacity Evaluation of Wireless Networks: Spectral Analysis Approach

In this paper we study the capacity of wireless cellular network, in particular the uplink of WCDMA system by using the two dimensional continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) technique. Considering two types of calls: real-time (RT) calls that characterized by a quasi fixed transmission rate, and best-effort (BE) calls which do not require strict demand but need some reliability conditions. We develop an approach based on the spectral analysis for evaluating the cell capacity. We explicitly obtain the simultaneous distribution of the number of RT connections and the number of BE connections in the steady-state. This analysis allows us to simplify the computation of the performance measures including expected delay and throughput of BE traffic. These performances are obtained explicitly in both cases (finite and infinite) of BE calls as function of system parameters like arrival rate of BE and RT calls, service rate of BE and RT calls. These results allow the operator to evaluate the cell capacity by varying these parameters independently of the number of BE calls according to its policy to manage the network. Note that this analysis can be applied to various systems such as WiMAX/HSPA, and for both uplink and downlink scenarios, so our spectral analysis approach is not only applicable to the uplink of WCDMA system. We further propose some CAC (Call admission control) policies for BE traffic. We finally conclude this work by some numerical and simulation results. The simulation results obtained by the network simulator (NS2) are closely to the numerical results of our analytical results which validate our theoretical model

On the Design of a Reward-Based Incentive Mechanism for Delay Tolerant Networks

International audienceA central problem in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) is to persuade mobile nodes to participate in relaying messages. Indeed, the delivery of a message incurs a certain number of costs for a relay. We consider a two- hop DTN in which a source node, wanting to get its message across to the destination as fast as possible, promises each relay it meets a reward. This reward is the minimum amount that offsets the expected delivery cost, as estimated by the relay from the information given by the source (number of existing copies of the message, age of these copies). A reward is given only to the relay that is the first one to deliver the message to the destination. We show that under fairly weak assumptions the expected reward the source pays remains the same irrespective of the information it conveys, provided that the type of information does not vary dynamically over time. On the other hand, the source can gain by adapting the information it conveys to a meeting relay. For the particular cases of two relays or exponentially distributed inter-contact times, we give some structural results of the optimal adaptive policy

Predicting popularity dynamics of online contents using data filtering methods

International audienc

Predicting popularity dynamics of online contents using data filtering methods

International audienc