Dynamically constructing and maintaining virtual access points in a macro cell with selfish nodes

• We propose a new cell-based clustering scheme to construct and maintain network backbone.
• A new game incentive mechanism is proposed and integrated into our cell-based scheme.
• Our scheme can be adaptive to the diversity and fluctuation of wireless transmission ranges.
• Our scheme allows the diversity in terms of the size of subcells and the number of them.
• The number of inter-subcell links can be flexibly adjusted according to network status.

With the appearance of wireless applications generating a huge volume of traffic, the low-power access points (e.g., pico base stations) are introduced to cellular systems to improve system capacity. However, network operators must make a huge investment in the installation and maintenance. The added relays require flexible site acquisition, which is important yet intractable for network service providers. Therefore, we propose an economical and effective alternative scheme for some outdoor scenarios (e.g., outdoor festivals). The basic idea is that, inspired by a class of cell-based clustering approaches, we partition a macro cell into a number of small cells, such that a connected backbone network can be constructed and maintained by electing a wireless client device from each small cell to build its inter-subcell links (i.e., the links between the neighboring small cells). Also, a new game-based incentive mechanism is proposed and integrated into our cell-based approach to stimulate selfish devices to participate in the construction and maintenance of network backbone. The correctness of this incentive mechanism has been proved. Furthermore, we have also proved that the topology derived from our scheme has the property of robustness. The simulation results indicate that our scheme achieves less control messages and longer network lifetime, compared with the existing cell-based clustering schemes.