Employing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Improving Handoff Using Cooperative Game Theory

Heterogeneous wireless networks that are used for seamless mobility are expected to face prominent problems in future fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. Due to their proper flexibility and adaptable preparation, remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could assist heterogeneous wireless communication. However, the key challenges of current UAV-assisted communications consist in having appropriate accessibility over wireless networks via mobile devices with an acceptable Quality of Service grounded on the users’ preferences. To this end, we propose a novel method based on cooperative game theory to select the best UAV during handover process and optimize handover among UAVs by decreasing the i) end-to-end delay, ii) handover latency, and iii) signaling overheads. Moreover, the standard design of software-defined network with media-independent handover is used as forwarding switches in order to obtain seamless mobility. Numerical results derived from the real data are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of number of handovers, cost, and delay.