A game theoretic scenario for LTE load balancing

Wireless networks' evolutionary roadmap has always been evolving towards achieving increased network capacity and higher data rates. Load balancing, by handing off mobiles present at cell borders to neighboring ones, would accommodate additional users thus it would reduce congestion and improve cell capacity. Motivated to autonomously achieve load balancing, we propose in this paper a game theoretic scenario for load balancing via coalition formation (LBCF) for a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system. We focused on LTE because self-tuning and self-organization mechanisms represent an intrinsic part of the LTE radio access network which is one of the leading 4th generation systems under deployment. While minimizing human intervention in the network load management, LBCF simulation results show a significant 19% reduction in dropped calls' rate which motivates follow on research work.