Cell breathing algorithms for load balancing in Wi-Fi/cellular heterogeneous networks

As the data traffic demand increases exponentially, efficient and fair use of Wi-Fi networks together with the emerging cellular networks becomes a crucial topic. In this article, we first present novel cell breathing based load balancing algorithms for Wi-Fi networks which provide full service availability. Then we enhance these algorithms to provide efficient offloading from cellular to Wi-Fi network in hot-spot areas. We also provide an efficient adaptive strategy for dynamic environments, where user distribution temporally changes. An extensive set of simulation results show that the proposed algorithms are very promising in satisfying min-max fairness and better user experience in Wi-Fi/Cellular heterogeneous networks. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.