Load balancing algorithms in heterogeneous networks for intelligent transportation systems

Nowadays the Always Best Connected paradigm becomes more and more important, but fulfilling the requirements of this paradigm is not an easy task. Providing ubiquitous connectivity in the particular case of intelligent transportation systems requires, in most of the cases, the joint usage of the transmission capacities offered by several wireless access technologies. This paper proposes a Game Theory based load balancing algorithm capable to distribute efficiently the data flows generated by various services used by the passengers of the transportation vehicles over the transmission channels of several wireless networks. The paper proposes also two reference load balancing algorithms, the Round Robin and the Multiple Knapsack algorithms, for assessing the performance improvement brought by the Game Theory based algorithm. Simulations performed in a realistic scenario validate the good performance of the proposed algorithm and show that this algorithm is a good alternative for load balancing operations.