Game theory based load balancing in small cell heterogeneous networks

Small cell networks are one effective solution for solving the contradiction between the rapid increased mobile data activity and limited network capacity. Small cells are densely deployed in hot spots, and the traffic load of which fiercely fluctuates in space and time. This will cause decrease of network throughput and result in cell congestion. In order to improve network throughput and reduce congestion, load balancing is introduced by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). In this paper, we propose a hybrid load balancing (HLB) scheme based on improved Cournot game model for small cell heterogeneous networks. We model the small cell heterogeneous networks load balancing as an improved Cournot game model. The pricing function reflects the interference that a cell suffers from another cell. The HLB algorithm, which combines mobility load balancing with cell zooming, is designed for approximating theoretically optimal solutions of our formulated game model. Simulation results is provided to illustrate that the proposed HLB algorithm performs better in terms of system throughput, cell edge throughput and system blocking rate.