A game theoretical approach for cooperative green mobile operators under roaming price consideration

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a green mobile operator collaborating with other traditional mobile operators. Its goal is to minimize its CO2 emissions, maximize its profit or achieve or tradeoff between both objectives by offloading its users to neighbor networks and exploiting renewable energies. On the other hand, traditional mobile operators aim to maximize their profits by attracting the maximum number of roamed users. The problem is modeled as a two-level Stackelberg game and its equilibrium is derived. A green mobile operator level that determines how many users per each base station to offload to each neighbor network, and a non-green mobile operator level where operators focus on finding the optimal roaming price. Our simulation results show a significant saving in terms of CO2 emissions compared to the non-cooperation case and that roaming decision depends essentially on the availability of renewable energy in base station sites. © 2015 IEEE.