Greening the Airwaves With Collaborating Mobile Network Operators

—Base station sharing is currently considered one of the most promising solutions for reducing the energy consumptions costs of cellular networks. This paper presents a game theoretic framework for the study of such cooperative solutions where different mobile network operators (MNOs) decide to switch off subsets of their base stations during off-peak hours and roam their traffic to the remaining stations. The solution is based on a detailed optimization framework that determines exactly which base stations should remain active and how much traffic each one of them should serve, so as to maximize the aggregate energy savings. Accordingly, using the axiomatic Shapley value rule, it is determined how the benefits from the cooperation, i.e., the cost savings, should be dispersed among the cooperating MNOs. It is proved that this coalitional game with transferrable utilities has a non-empty core, and thus there exists a cooperation solution that incentivizes the participation of all o...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: TWC
• Authors: George Koutitas, George Iosifidis, Bart Lannoo, Mathieu Tahon, Sofie Verbrugge, Pavlos Ziridis, Lukasz Budzisz, Michela Meo, Marco Ajmone Marsan, Leandros Tassiulas
• Keywords: TWC 2016