Game Theoretic Analysis of Wireless Access Network Selection: Models, Inefficiency Bounds, and Algorithms

This paper addresses the problem of network selection, which arises when wireless mobile users can choose among multiple available wireless access networks to connect to. In particular, we are interested in studying the dynamics of the competition among different selfish mobile users which operate the network selection with the goal of minimizing their own selection cost. To this extent, we formalize the problem as a non-cooperative game, and we study the quality of the corresponding Nash equilibria under three expressions for the users' selection cost by deriving tight analytical bounds on the price-of-anarchy and the price-of-stability for the games. Finally, we introduce a mathematical programming formulation for the games which allows one to compute the equilibria in realistic wireless access network topologies.