Energy efficiency games for backhaul traffic in wireless networks

Next-generation wireless networks will be more dynamic and heterogeneous as indicated by developments of small cell networks, cognitive radio, and lightRadio™. The increasing demand for data traffic necessitates improved efficiency in wireless networks both in terms of spectrum usage and the management of mobile traffic. Cloud computing methods have been proposed to achieve these goals while reducing deployment and operational costs. Specifically, energy consumption is becoming an important bottleneck in wireless network infrastructure. This paper presents a game-theoretic framework for improving energy efficiency of wireless networks by focusing on energy-aware resource allocation in backhaul cloud computing. The problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimisation with two confliction sub-objectives: system power consumption and load balance. Then a noncooperative game is defined and proved as a potential game. Performance results for the proposed algorithm are demonstrated with numerical simulations.