Two-Stage Non-Cooperative Game Model for Vertical Handoffs in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

In a heterogeneous wireless network (HWN) environment, performing an efficient vertical handoff requires the efficient qualitative evaluation of all stakeholders like wireless networks (WN) and mobile users (MU) and mutual selection of best WN-MU. In the literature, most of the work deals with both these requirements jointly in the techniques proposed by them for the vertical handoffs (VHO) in HWNs, leaving very little scope to manipulate the above requirements independently. This may result in inefficient vertical handoffs. Hence, this chapter proposed a generalized two-stage two players, iterative non-cooperative game model. This model presents a modular framework that separates the quantitative evaluation of WNs and MUs (at Stage 1) from the game formulation and solution (at Stage 2) for mutual selection of best WN-MU pair for VHO. The simulation results show a substantial reduction in the number of vertical handoffs with the proposed game theory-based two-stage model as compared to a single-stage non-game theory method like multiple attribute decision making.