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Game-Theory based Wireless Access Point Selection scheme

Khanzada Fahimullah
Department of Electronic Engineering International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan fahim.msee228@iiu.edu.pk

Sher Hassan
Department of Electronic Engineering Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS) Quetta, Pakistan sh_zarar_900@yahoo.com

Abstract Selecting an Access Point (AP) for optimal transmission session among wireless users is one of the emerging research issues in Wireless Communication spheres. As selecting an AP having broader coverage and lower users density is prioritized among other choices, the behavior of users competing to gain the best available APs attention which promises optimal trade-off between load and distance, mimic real-world games. The diversity of users arrival-exit patterns and random selection due to change in strategy of other user(s), stipulates GameTheory, an approach imitating real-world competition scenarios. In our research work, we model AP selection as a game having users, as players, struggling for best selection and achieving the systems overall stability by Nash Equilibrium. The decision of selecting an Access Point (AP) needs to be addressed using reallife factors and parameters including, but not limited to, price, local network capabilities, and application requirements etc. The paper presents an intelligent AP selection strategy and ameliorates the issue by including the price metric used for roaming among the different network operators. Both analytical and empirical approaches are consulted to simulate and assess users behavior. Keywords Game-Theory, Access Point selection, wireless networks, Nash equilibrium, homogenous networks

However, change of location may not produce efficacious results as it is often unpredictable to forecast arrival and exit in a dynamic environment. After moving toward the selected AP, the user may come across the same situation i.e. arrival of new users resulting in overload. As a result, the user, for the second time, tries searching available APs and selects the best one. Thus the process may repeat resulting in dissatisfaction and wasted effort. In worst case, the user may end up moving repeatedly. In short, changing location may benefit both the user and the network initially, however, the effectiveness need to be examined prior to its application on real systems. We analyzed the stability and performance of such a system. The only motivation behind a users movement to select different location is the insurance of optimal trade-off between the bandwidth gained and effort in traveling the additional distance. To choose the optimal AP, the user weighs the load and distance for all APs. In such decision-based selection scheme the main reasons questioning its ineffectiveness are: the change in future user distribution may invalidate the selection and that a user makes a decision for his own benefit and does not take into consideration the condition of the system as whole or rest of users. Such selfish behavior of users motivates us to model the AP selection as game, putting before us Game Theory which is an appropriate tool to analyze scenarios of competition among selfish entities. The stable user-to-AP assignments are the Nash Equilibria of the game. Game Theory does not suggest algorithm to reach the desired outcome. To achieve Nash equilibria, each player must take into account the possible actions of other players leading to an infinite sequence of speculation-counter-speculation which makes it comparatively difficult to design distributed algorithms. For our model, each player also needs to consider the choices of both current and future users. Through simulation, we analyze the stability of myopic access point selection based on load-distance-price trade-off. The selection remains optimal for a large fraction of time for

I.

INTRODUCTION

In order to obtain network connectivity in a Wireless Network, a device needs to associate itself with an Access Point (AP), located within transmission range, among several APs deployed across the area, for provision of uninterrupted coverage. For most practical cases, users distribution is of non-uniform type leading to potential problems like reduced bandwidth share per user, increased delay and signal degradation resulting in packet loss, to name the few. In case of overloaded APs, a user may get his proper share by opting to move toward less-loaded AP. Satyanarayanan [12] investigated the idea by describing a scenario having user, due to being trapped in a high concentration area, not able to get sufficient bandwidth. The smart computing system running on the users machine discovers a location having available capacity and prompts the user to move toward that location.

2 which the user remains in the system. Our work thus contributes to a deeper understanding of distributed AP selection in various scenarios which, in true sense, is an essential pre-requisite to be considered in real-world deployment scenario. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section II presents a brief review of related work. In Section III we model the access point selection game, in Section IV present our simulation results and Section V concludes the paper. II. RELATED WORK selected AP is neglected and once AP is selected user remains stationary. As in majority of events, we assume the timeinterval between users exit short enough to be insignificant. All available APs have same capability and the transmission between a user and associated AP do not interfere with that of others which is practically achieved by assigning nonoverlapping frequency channels. Users individual workloads may differ owing to their demands and requirements giving rise to fluctuating AP loads. Therefore, we consider it practical to estimate the load based on number of associated users in which a users preference is to select the AP having fewer associated users. The use of considering number of associated user as AP load is relatively a stable property. We examine the system behavior when load, distance and price parameters are assigned different weightages. In our modeled game, users are the players. Each player can select any one of the APs after developing a strategy. Each AP is assigned some cost, based on calculation of distance, load and price parameters, which is inversely proportional to his/her utility. Maximizing utility by minimizing cost is the objective of every user. During making selection a user has the knowledge of all decisions made previously but is not aware about the moves of remaining users. The outcome of game is an assignment of users to AP in a stable manner. A user prioritize the AP, having fewer associated users, requiring lower distance to travel and belongs to same operator as different operator may incur higher costs for roaming. Therefore our characteristics: cost function must have following

Changing location for obtaining more bandwidth was first perceived by Satyanarayanan [12]. A device from users side gathers information from the network and then motivates the user to move toward location providing sufficient bandwidth. However, the idea is not evaluated for stability or implementation. In work done by Balachandran et al., congested APs direct mobile users to less-loaded cells solving the stability issue since the computations are made centrally but the scheme does not consider preferences of individual users [7]. In distributed networks having selfish users, a solution promising flexibility for users to select on their own is suitable. A decentralized protocol is proposed by Sanzgiri et al. in which users change location for improved Quality of Service in multihop networks [11]. In the sphere of wireless networking, game-theoretic approaches have been proposed for several problems, including multihop routing [5], power control [9], [3] and wireless access pricing [8], [2], [10] etc to name the few. Suri et al. analyze a load balancing game, where clients as selfish players make a server selection to minimize individual execution latency [13]. However, the network latency, analogous to distance in our work, is ignored and also their results does not lead to Nash equilibrium. Kimaya et al. present a Game-Theoretic analysis of their AP-selection model and characterize the existence of Nash equilibria [6]. They examine distributed myopic selections in which the user has to compromise between the load (density of users) and distance (distance between user and AP) in order to select an AP promising optimal transmission. Because of achieving stability, their solution approaches the real-world scene. However, in their work the consideration of having more than one operator is not addressed and neither is the price metric, to be incurred in selecting a particular AP, addressed while calculating the cost-function. III. ACCESS POINT SELECTION AS GAME

It should increase with increase of users associated with AP. It should increase if a user opts to select different operators AP. It should increase with an increase of distance needed to be traversed for a user to reach the AP.

We chose to evaluate the cost using following function: Ci,j = Lj + Pj + Di,j (1)

Where Ci,j, Lj, Pj and Di,j denote cost assigned by user i to AP j, number of users associated with AP j, price of AP j and distance to be traveled by user i for AP j respectively. With the users objective to maximize his utility by minimizing his cost, the preference parameters assigned to load, price and distance denoted by , and respectively are assigned varied values owing to the situation based upon which the decision of optimal connectivity is ensured. Lets say if is zero then the user does not care at all about the distance needed to travel and is willing to travel the longer possible distance. In other words, is of more importance by a user having the task of downloading a file of large size, therefore he prefers, above all, the AP having lower number of associated users, as

In this section we describe our wireless AP selection game. On entering the system, the user, assumed to be located anywhere in the geographic area, gets informed about available APs and their corresponding distances from his position through software running on users terminal. Based on such information, the user selects an AP. Selection are made in a sequential order and the users distance from

3 opposed to user whose work is merely browsing the web or checking email. In our results we achieve stability by using Nash equilibrium which states that no user can lonely strategize to reduce his cost. The system is in equilibrium if a change of any one users strategy causes him to earn less than his previous choice and hence the achievement of Nash equilibrium ensures the stability of assignments made [1]. After deriving the condition for obtaining Nash equilibrium, we evaluate the stability of our approach. Owing to complexities of algorithms guaranteeing Nash equilibrium, by having inter-dependence of actions involved, we consider a myopic algorithm and examine its stability. Unlike other games having greedy strategy hindering the occurrence of equilibrium, the algorithm, imitating the behavior of selfish greedy user, produces Nash equilibrium in just a single iteration. With help of information service deployed in the system, as algorithm, following four steps are executed by user upon entering the system: 1.) Information about available APs location and their associated users is obtained. 2.) Using equation 1, cost of each AP is calculated. 3.) AP having least cost is selected. 4.) AP selected is sought by user by associating and moving, if necessary, toward it. Our results and work of Kimaya et al. prove the application of above four steps leading to Nash equilibrium [6]. In the next section, through simulation, we examine the result of AP selection based on load-distance-price trade-off. IV. SIMULATION RESULTS modeling the phenomenon of high user concentration in a localized area, as can be observed in most of real deployment cases. For our study, we follow the approach of Poisson distribution which is characterized by being used in modeling independent user arrivals [4]. We also model the situation of users entering the system sequentially and exiting simultaneously at the end. In our simulations, there also lies probability of a user changing his initial selection as result of further arrivals in the system, however, for stabilitys sake the users need adhering to their initial selections. Such desirable behavior of user changing initial selection is simulated by us. Through simulation results in MATLAB 7.3.0, we evaluate the edge of our approach by noticing the systems overall approach toward achieving stability. We average our results for over 100 simulation runs with the random number generator seeded differently and simulation starts executing as first user enters the system at time zero and lasts till exit of last user. B. Metrics We use the following performance metrics, in order to evaluate the benefits, costs and stability of Access Point selection. a. Maximum AP Load Difference (MALD): MALD, being the difference in average load between the most-loaded and least-loaded Access Points, demands a low value to ensure a balanced load distribution. Average Experienced Load Per User (AELPU): With experienced load for a user being the load at the associated Access Point, AELPU denotes the experienced load averaged over in-system for each user and then among all users. It is desirable for AELPU to have a low value. Average AP Parameter Experienced by Users (AAPEU): AAPEU is measurement of Load, Price and Distance attributes experienced by a user in getting connected to a particular AP. It is the average of such experience obtained for one hundred different users. Average Experienced Price per User (AEPU): The experienced price for a user is the price of the selected access point. This value is averaged over the in-system time of each user and then across all users. Again, a low value for this metric is desirable. Distance Traveled Per User (DTPU): DTPU, which is the distance a user travels to use optimal Access Point instead of the nearest, indicates the cost.

b.

Here we present simulation-based study of myopic access point selection based on load-distance-price trade-off with the sole objective being evaluation of cost, benefit and stability of our approach. Section IV-A presents the details of our experiments, section IV-B, the performance metrics and section IV-C presents the evaluation. A. Details Access Point (AP) selection is evaluated under both uniform and non-uniform user distribution scenarios as shown in Figure 1(a) and Figure 1(b) respectively with each having 100 users struggling to associate with any of the 16 APs arranged in a 44 grid in an overall area of 500m500m. Users locations are generated randomly. With each dot representing a user and small red box representing an AP for both uniform and non-uniform distributions, the maximum distance between any two Access Points is 425 m, allowing us to vary the value of from 0 to 500. In the second scenario (Figure 1(b)), 80% of users reside within 16% of total region,

c.

d.

e.

a.) Uniform Figure 1 User Distribution

b.) Non-Uniform

f.

Fraction of Users Motivated to Change Strategy (FUMCS): FUMCS denotes the fraction of users

motivated to change their initial selection and move to a different Access Point while in the system. It is desired for FUMCS to have low value for greater stability.

C. Evaluation In this section we present our simulation results. Figures (2, 3 and 4) show, for both uniform and nonuniform distribution, users association with Access Point, Access Point Load and Attributes of selected AP for each user respectively. In these Figures (2,3 and 4), the simulation results for 1st, 5th and 9th sequential runs among the initial 10 runs are shown , with u representing the results for uniform distribution and nu for non-uniform distribution respectively.

a.) u=1

b.) u=5

c.) u=9

d.) nu=1

e.) nu=5

f.) nu=9

Figure 2 Users association with Access Point

a.) u=1 Figure 3 Access Point Load

b.) u=5

c.) u=9

d.) nu=1

e.) nu=5

f.)nu=9

a.) u=1

b.) u=5

c.) u=9

d.) nu=1

e.) nu=5

f.) nu=9

Figure 4 Attributes of selected Access Point for each User From Figure 2, it is shown that as a whole, users, despite being selfish comply with Game Theoretic rules and strategize to stabilize so as to move toward a nearly possible balanced state. Fig. 3 shows the users load on different Access Points. It is shown that throughout ten runs the strategy is to lower load upon Access Points (AP) thus balancing the total load with respect to APs. Such balancing of load has many applications and usefulness. Figure 4 shows the graphical results of the selected APs attributes (load, price and distance). The attributes relation to real-life case can be gauged by the fact that, as compared to the previous runs, the attributes approach toward balancing in the following runs. The strategy imitates the real-world situation by including price, in addition to load and distance parameters. Though the above results do not anticipate the ideal situations whereby the parameters rate of change is rapid enough to be unpredictable, the figures show the transition based on strategys change.

a.) AAPEU

b.) AALPU

c.) DTPU

d.) AEPU

e.) FUMCS Figure 5 Results of Performance Metrics

f.) MALD

6 Figure 5 shows the simulation results of performance parameters discussed in section IV-b. One thousand runs were taken to measure MALD, AELPU, AAPEU, AEPU, DTPU and FUMCS. For brevitys sake, only simulation results for non-uniform case are shown, as results from uniform user distribution show similar trends. From Fig. 5 following observations about performance metrics are made: AAPPEU: In the range 0 1, net outcome was observed approaching the same range of values. AELPU: Output remained between 11.5 and 12.5 thus approaching toward ideality. DTPU: By taking the range between lowest and highest extremes i.e. 0 425 net outcome remained 150 170 approx. AEPU: As in previous metrics, output didnt deviate to greater degree. FUMCS: On average approx 15-23 out of 100 users decide to change their strategy which approaches stability. MALD: Outputs range is between 8 and 10 which show nearly the stable case. V. CONCLUSION
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to express our sincere gratitude toward our guide Mr. Manzoor Ahmed Khilji for his valuable supervision and constant encouragement. We are also indebted to Mr. Muhammad Taimoor and Mr. Yousaf Khan for their valuable recommendations and insightful suggestions. REFERENCES
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This paper introduces the motivation for the work on access point selection algorithms. In our work, we proposed and evaluated a solution for an intelligent framework for designing an Access Point selection strategy for user having convenience of roaming among different operators. Our results prove the existence of Nash equilibrium after running our algorithm based on myopic distribution. Our future work will be based on selection strategies after inclusion of other real world parameters and we aim to consider the scenario of mobile access points.

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