A Comprehensive Survey of Potential Game Approaches to Wireless Networks

Potential games form a class of non-cooperative games where unilateral improvement dynamics are guaranteed to converge in many practical cases. The potential game approach has been applied to a wide range of wireless network problems, particularly to a variety of channel assignment problems. In this paper, the properties of potential games are introduced, and games in wireless networks that have been proven to be potential games are comprehensively discussed.Comment: 44 pages, 6 figures, to appear in IEICE Transactions on Communications, vol. E98-B, no. 9, Sept. 201

Co-primary inter-operator spectrum sharing over a limited spectrum pool using repeated games

We consider two small cell operators deployed in the same geographical area, sharing spectrum resources from a common pool. A method is investigated to coordinate the utilization of the spectrum pool without monetary transactions and without revealing operator-specific information to other parties. For this, we construct a protocol based on asking and receiving spectrum usage favors by the operators, and keeping a book of the favors. A spectrum usage favor is exchanged between the operators if one is asking for a permission to use some of the resources from the pool on an exclusive basis, and the other is willing to accept that. As a result, the proposed method does not force an operator to take action. An operator with a high load may take spectrum usage favors from an operator that has few users to serve, and it is likely to return these favors in the future to show a cooperative spirit and maintain reciprocity. We formulate the interactions between the operators as a repeated game and determine rules to decide whether to ask or grant a favor at each stage game. We illustrate that under frequent network load variations, which are expected to be prominent in small cell deployments, both operators can attain higher user rates as compared to the case of no coordination of the resource utilization.Comment: To be published in proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) at London, Jun. 201

Adaptive Multi-objective Optimization for Energy Efficient Interference Coordination in Multi-Cell Networks

In this paper, we investigate the distributed power allocation for multi-cell OFDMA networks taking both energy efficiency and inter-cell interference (ICI) mitigation into account. A performance metric termed as throughput contribution is exploited to measure how ICI is effectively coordinated. To achieve a distributed power allocation scheme for each base station (BS), the throughput contribution of each BS to the network is first given based on a pricing mechanism. Different from existing works, a biobjective problem is formulated based on multi-objective optimization theory, which aims at maximizing the throughput contribution of the BS to the network and minimizing its total power consumption at the same time. Using the method of Pascoletti and Serafini scalarization, the relationship between the varying parameters and minimal solutions is revealed. Furthermore, to exploit the relationship an algorithm is proposed based on which all the solutions on the boundary of the efficient set can be achieved by adaptively adjusting the involved parameters. With the obtained solution set, the decision maker has more choices on power allocation schemes in terms of both energy consumption and throughput. Finally, the performance of the algorithm is assessed by the simulation results.Comment: 29 page

Spectrum Coordination in Energy Efficient Cognitive Radio Networks

Device coordination in open spectrum systems is a challenging problem, particularly since users experience varying spectrum availability over time and location. In this paper, we propose a game theoretical approach that allows cognitive radio pairs, namely the primary user (PU) and the secondary user (SU), to update their transmission powers and frequencies simultaneously. Specifically, we address a Stackelberg game model in which individual users attempt to hierarchically access to the wireless spectrum while maximizing their energy efficiency. A thorough analysis of the existence, uniqueness and characterization of the Stackelberg equilibrium is conducted. In particular, we show that a spectrum coordination naturally occurs when both actors in the system decide sequentially about their powers and their transmitting carriers. As a result, spectrum sensing in such a situation turns out to be a simple detection of the presence/absence of a transmission on each sub-band. We also show that when users experience very different channel gains on their two carriers, they may choose to transmit on the same carrier at the Stackelberg equilibrium as this contributes enough energy efficiency to outweigh the interference degradation caused by the mutual transmission. Then, we provide an algorithmic analysis on how the PU and the SU can reach such a spectrum coordination using an appropriate learning process. We validate our results through extensive simulations and compare the proposed algorithm to some typical scenarios including the non-cooperative case and the throughput-based-utility systems. Typically, it is shown that the proposed Stackelberg decision approach optimizes the energy efficiency while still maximizing the throughput at the equilibrium.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technolog