BASE STATION POWER BACKUP SCHEDULING FOR NETWORK PROVIDERS BY A THREE-PERSON DYADIC GAME

Background. Recently reliable telecommunication has been challenged due to power grid instability and temporary blackouts. There is a strong need for optimizing the base station power backup for telecommunication network providers. Objective. The purpose of the paper is to substantiate a game model of optimizing the base station power backup for three major telecommunication network providers and determine the best strategy. The optimization is based on payoff symmetry, rather than equilibrium. Methods. There are only two pure strategies at the provider — to apply the power backup or ignore applying, whenever needed. The latter means avoiding additional expenses for the provider while applying the power backup requires additional expenses. The cost of applying the power backup is set to a conditional unit. It is further assumed that, if only one provider does not apply the power backup, it does not affect the quality of service (QoS). When there is no backup at all, QoS worsens significantly, users subsequently seek for alternative telecommunication services, and shortly every provider loses the 3 units. Results. The provider’s expected payoff, being treated as a loss, is minimized over the set of symmetric mixed situations, where the provider’s mixed strategy is the no-backup probability. The base station power backup best strategy is realized by turning the power backup off with an irrational probability whose value lies between 0.05904144 and 0.05904145. It is more likely that the backup state switch is possible at definite time intervals usually counted in hours or days. Conclusions. The best strategy allows saving the power backup for 5.904 % of the temporarily-off-the-grid period by saving 2.9 % of expenses for the backup, which does not worsen the QoS. Whenever the amounts of providers’ expenses, costs, and losses are changed, the best strategy is determined in the same way it has been found.