LTE or LAA: Choosing Network Mode for My Mobile Phone in 5G Network

Long Term Evolution (LTE) in unlicensed spectrum, Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), has been considered as an effective complement in offloading growing traffic. The LAA is expected to be deployed initially through the small cell integrated under LTE macro cell. Therefore, LTE users under the coverage of LAA small cell must decide to connect one of the co-located networks either LTE or LAA to maximize their performance. In this scenario, we model a network selection game for LTE users using mixed strategy game theoretic approach. Afterwards, we formulate behavior of strategic users toward network selection as a function of the number of nearby users. The simulation results show that increasing number of nearby users make a user less likely to switch to LAA small cell. Additionally, more users nearby make it less likely that LAA resources is being utilized.