Channel Assignment and User Association Game in Dense 802.11 Wireless Networks

In densely deployed IEEE 802.11 wireless networks, the transmission delay experienced by a user depends not only on the traffic load of the associated AP, but also the contention level of other APs operating on the same channel. However, due to the random distribution of users and inappropriate allocation of AP channels, the traffic loads of different APs are often uneven, leading to unfair delay experience to different users. In this paper, we consider the problem of channel assignment and user association for balancing the traffic load of APs operating on different channels, which is modeled as a non-cooperative game. We prove the existence of Nash equilibrium (NE) for this game, and derive the price of anarchy and the fairness index at NE. Simulation results are provided to compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with the theoretical bounds.