Abstract
Mobile data offloading is a current-day networking paradigm to channelize certain fraction of the cellular data traffic over unlicensed spectrum of WiFi. In this paper, we present a novel data offloading scheme built upon the exponential learning-based minority game (MG) theory. Performance comparison between cellular and WiFi services with respect to the offered load, has been used to derive an appropriate offloading condition for our proposed MG-based distributed data offloading algorithm. Effectiveness of the MG algorithm is tested by studying its performance through extensive simulation by varying several important parameters, like, pricing parameter \(\beta\), cellular offered throughput (\(S_{{c}}\)), and temperature coefficient of the algorithm (\(\gamma\)). An effective model for tuning pricing parameter \(\beta\) with respect to the offered load (named as, Target Pricing scheme) is also presented using reverse engineering approach by considering the dynamic traffic condition. We have provisioned the application of our algorithm in multi-access point environment. We have studied the behaviour of different classes of nodes in heterogeneous population, while applying a MG-based networking algorithm. Through extensive NS3 based simulation we have evaluated the performance of our proposed algorithm in an IEEE 802.11ax environment and studied the effect of MIMO, QoS, transport layer and unsaturated traffic condition.
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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.
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Acknowledgements
Authors wish to acknowledge Mrs.Aparna Behara, Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, for helping in NS3-simulation setup.
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Appendix
Appendix
This appendix explains the various parameters used in Eq. 4. E[P] refers to the average payload size, and \(T_{\sigma }\) denotes the duration of an empty slot time. Additionally, \(T_s\) refers to the average time the channel is sensed busy because of a successful transmission, and \(T_c\) is the average time the channel is sensed busy by each node during a collision. Next, considering IEEE 802.11 basic access mechanism, \(T_s\) and \(T_c\) are given by:
C, SIFS, DIFS, ACK, \(\delta\), H denote the WiFi channel bit rate, short inter-frame spacing, distributed inter-frame spacing, duration of the acknowledgement, the propagation delay and header length in bits respectively, whose default values are given in Table 2. Again, H is given by:
However, if the WLAN is operated in RTS-CTS mode, \(T_s\) and \(T_c\) are defined as follows:
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Majumder, B., Venkatesh, T.G. Mobile data offloading based on minority game theoretic framework. Wireless Netw 28, 2967–2982 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-022-02993-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-022-02993-z