Incentive mechanism design for WiFi offloading with users' mobility

WiFi network helps offload the traffic pressure in cellular networks and alleviate its traffic congestion. However, it can merely offload the traffic within its coverage. In view of the mobility of users, if the users beyond WiFi coverage are incentivized with certain rewards to postpone their present cellular network services, and wait till they enter WiFi coverage, the traffic offloading capacity of WiFi Network will be significantly enhanced. This paper discusses an incentive mechanism for the operator to encourage users to delay their cellular network services and switch to WiFi network, and formulates the problem as a two-stage Stackelberg game. In this game, an operator expects to adopt an optimum reward solution, giving considerations to the extent of cellular network congestion and the required reward for users. Optimal reward mechanisms for the operators are proposed. According to the research result, the proposed incentive mechanism can effectively reduce the total costs of operators including the cellular network congestion costs and the user reward costs. ©, 2015, Science Press. All right reserved.