4,503 research outputs found
Maximizing Utility Among Selfish Users in Social Groups
We consider the problem of a social group of users trying to obtain a
"universe" of files, first from a server and then via exchange amongst
themselves. We consider the selfish file-exchange paradigm of give-and-take,
whereby two users can exchange files only if each has something unique to offer
the other. We are interested in maximizing the number of users who can obtain
the universe through a schedule of file-exchanges. We first present a practical
paradigm of file acquisition. We then present an algorithm which ensures that
at least half the users obtain the universe with high probability for files
and users when , thereby showing an
approximation ratio of 2. Extending these ideas, we show a -
approximation algorithm for , and a - approximation algorithm for , , .
Finally, we show that for any , there exists a schedule of file
exchanges which ensures that at least half the users obtain the universe.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; submitted for review to the National Conference
on Communications (NCC) 201
Controlled Matching Game for Resource Allocation and User Association in WLANs
In multi-rate IEEE 802.11 WLANs, the traditional user association based on
the strongest received signal and the well known anomaly of the MAC protocol
can lead to overloaded Access Points (APs), and poor or heterogeneous
performance. Our goal is to propose an alternative game-theoretic approach for
association. We model the joint resource allocation and user association as a
matching game with complementarities and peer effects consisting of selfish
players solely interested in their individual throughputs. Using recent
game-theoretic results we first show that various resource sharing protocols
actually fall in the scope of the set of stability-inducing resource allocation
schemes. The game makes an extensive use of the Nash bargaining and some of its
related properties that allow to control the incentives of the players. We show
that the proposed mechanism can greatly improve the efficiency of 802.11 with
heterogeneous nodes and reduce the negative impact of peer effects such as its
MAC anomaly. The mechanism can be implemented as a virtual connectivity
management layer to achieve efficient APs-user associations without
modification of the MAC layer
Cooperative Local Caching under Heterogeneous File Preferences
Local caching is an effective scheme for leveraging the memory of the mobile
terminal (MT) and short range communications to save the bandwidth usage and
reduce the download delay in the cellular communication system. Specifically,
the MTs first cache in their local memories in off-peak hours and then exchange
the requested files with each other in the vicinity during peak hours. However,
prior works largely overlook MTs' heterogeneity in file preferences and their
selfish behaviours. In this paper, we practically categorize the MTs into
different interest groups according to the MTs' preferences. Each group of MTs
aims to increase the probability of successful file discovery from the
neighbouring MTs (from the same or different groups). Hence, we define the
groups' utilities as the probability of successfully discovering the file in
the neighbouring MTs, which should be maximized by deciding the caching
strategies of different groups. By modelling MTs' mobilities as homogeneous
Poisson point processes (HPPPs), we analytically characterize MTs' utilities in
closed-form. We first consider the fully cooperative case where a centralizer
helps all groups to make caching decisions. We formulate the problem as a
weighted-sum utility maximization problem, through which the maximum utility
trade-offs of different groups are characterized. Next, we study two benchmark
cases under selfish caching, namely, partial and no cooperation, with and
without inter-group file sharing, respectively. The optimal caching
distributions for these two cases are derived. Finally, numerical examples are
presented to compare the utilities under different cases and show the
effectiveness of the fully cooperative local caching compared to the two
benchmark cases
Social Data Offloading in D2D-Enhanced Cellular Networks by Network Formation Games
Recently, cellular networks are severely overloaded by social-based services,
such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, in which thousands of clients subscribe
a common content provider (e.g., a popular singer) and download his/her content
updates all the time. Offloading such traffic through complementary networks,
such as a delay tolerant network formed by device-to-device (D2D)
communications between mobile subscribers, is a promising solution to reduce
the cellular burdens. In the existing solutions, mobile users are assumed to be
volunteers who selfishlessly deliver the content to every other user in
proximity while moving. However, practical users are selfish and they will
evaluate their individual payoffs in the D2D sharing process, which may highly
influence the network performance compared to the case of selfishless users. In
this paper, we take user selfishness into consideration and propose a network
formation game to capture the dynamic characteristics of selfish behaviors. In
the proposed game, we provide the utility function of each user and specify the
conditions under which the subscribers are guaranteed to converge to a stable
network. Then, we propose a practical network formation algorithm in which the
users can decide their D2D sharing strategies based on their historical
records. Simulation results show that user selfishness can highly degrade the
efficiency of data offloading, compared with ideal volunteer users. Also, the
decrease caused by user selfishness can be highly affected by the cost ratio
between the cellular transmission and D2D transmission, the access delays, and
mobility patterns
Self-Organizing Flows in Social Networks
Social networks offer users new means of accessing information, essentially
relying on "social filtering", i.e. propagation and filtering of information by
social contacts. The sheer amount of data flowing in these networks, combined
with the limited budget of attention of each user, makes it difficult to ensure
that social filtering brings relevant content to the interested users. Our
motivation in this paper is to measure to what extent self-organization of the
social network results in efficient social filtering. To this end we introduce
flow games, a simple abstraction that models network formation under selfish
user dynamics, featuring user-specific interests and budget of attention. In
the context of homogeneous user interests, we show that selfish dynamics
converge to a stable network structure (namely a pure Nash equilibrium) with
close-to-optimal information dissemination. We show in contrast, for the more
realistic case of heterogeneous interests, that convergence, if it occurs, may
lead to information dissemination that can be arbitrarily inefficient, as
captured by an unbounded "price of anarchy". Nevertheless the situation differs
when users' interests exhibit a particular structure, captured by a metric
space with low doubling dimension. In that case, natural autonomous dynamics
converge to a stable configuration. Moreover, users obtain all the information
of interest to them in the corresponding dissemination, provided their budget
of attention is logarithmic in the size of their interest set
- âŠ