Applications of Repeated Games in Wireless Networks: A Survey

A repeated game is an effective tool to model interactions and conflicts for players aiming to achieve their objectives in a long-term basis. Contrary to static noncooperative games that model an interaction among players in only one period, in repeated games, interactions of players repeat for multiple periods; and thus the players become aware of other players' past behaviors and their future benefits, and will adapt their behavior accordingly. In wireless networks, conflicts among wireless nodes can lead to selfish behaviors, resulting in poor network performances and detrimental individual payoffs. In this paper, we survey the applications of repeated games in different wireless networks. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of repeated games to encourage wireless nodes to cooperate, thereby improving network performances and avoiding network disruption due to selfish behaviors. Furthermore, various problems in wireless networks and variations of repeated game models together with the corresponding solutions are discussed in this survey. Finally, we outline some open issues and future research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, 168 reference

Weighted Max-Min Resource Allocation for Frequency Selective Channels

In this paper, we discuss the computation of weighted max-min rate allocation using joint TDM/FDM strategies under a PSD mask constraint. We show that the weighted max-min solution allocates the rates according to a predetermined rate ratio defined by the weights, a fact that is very valuable for telecommunication service providers. Furthermore, we show that the problem can be efficiently solved using linear programming. We also discuss the resource allocation problem in the mixed services scenario where certain users have a required rate, while the others have flexible rate requirements. The solution is relevant to many communication systems that are limited by a power spectral density mask constraint such as WiMax, Wi-Fi and UWB

Enhancing cooperation in wireless networks using different concepts of game theory

PhDOptimizing radio resource within a network and across cooperating heterogeneous networks is the focus of this thesis. Cooperation in a multi-network environment is tackled by investigating network selection mechanisms. These play an important role in ensuring quality of service for users in a multi-network environment. Churning of mobile users from one service provider to another is already common when people change contracts and in a heterogeneous communication environment, where mobile users have freedom to choose the best wireless service-real time selection is expected to become common feature. This real time selection impacts both the technical and the economic aspects of wireless network operations. Next generation wireless networks will enable a dynamic environment whereby the nodes of the same or even different network operator can interact and cooperate to improve their performance. Cooperation has emerged as a novel communication paradigm that can yield tremendous performance gains from the physical layer all the way up to the application layer. Game theory and in particular coalitional game theory is a highly suited mathematical tool for modelling cooperation between wireless networks and is investigated in this thesis. In this thesis, the churning behaviour of wireless service users is modelled by using evolutionary game theory in the context of WLAN access points and WiMAX networks. This approach illustrates how to improve the user perceived QoS in heterogeneous networks using a two-layered optimization. The top layer views the problem of prediction of the network that would be chosen by a user where the criteria are offered bit rate, price, mobility support and reputation. At the second level, conditional on the strategies chosen by the users, the network provider hypothetically, reconfigures the network, subject to the network constraints of bandwidth and acceptable SNR and optimizes the network coverage to support users who would otherwise not be serviced adequately. This forms an iterative cycle until a solution that optimizes the user satisfaction subject to the adjustments that the network provider can make to mitigate the binding constraints, is found and applied to the real network. The evolutionary equilibrium, which is used to 3 compute the average number of users choosing each wireless service, is taken as the solution. This thesis also proposes a fair and practical cooperation framework in which the base stations belonging to the same network provider cooperate, to serve each other‘s customers. How this cooperation can potentially increase their aggregate payoffs through efficient utilization of resources is shown for the case of dynamic frequency allocation. This cooperation framework needs to intelligently determine the cooperating partner and provide a rational basis for sharing aggregate payoff between the cooperative partners for the stability of the coalition. The optimum cooperation strategy, which involves the allocations of the channels to mobile customers, can be obtained as solutions of linear programming optimizations

A Game Theory based Contention Window Adjustment for IEEE 802.11 under Heavy Load

The 802.11 families are considered as the most applicable set of standards for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) where nodes make access to the wireless media using random access techniques. In such networks, each node adjusts its contention window to the minimum size irrespective of the number of competing nodes, so in saturated mode and excessive number of nodes available, the network performance is reduced due to severe collision probability. A cooperative game is being proposed to adjust the users’ contention windows in improving the network throughput, delay and packet drop ratio under heavy traffic load circumstances. The system’s performance evaluated by simulations indicate some superiorities of the proposed method over 802.11-DCF (Distribute Coordinate Function)

Channel assignment and routing in cooperative and competitive wireless mesh networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Docter of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In this thesis, the channel assignment and routing problems have been investigated for both cooperative and competitive Wireless Mesh networks (WMNs). A dynamic and distributed channel assignment scheme has been proposed which generates the network topologies ensuring less interference and better connectivity. The proposed channel assignment scheme is capable of detecting the node failures and mobility in an efficient manner. The channel monitoring module precisely records the quality of bi-directional links in terms of link delays. In addition, a Quality of Service based Multi-Radio Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector (QMR-AODV) routing protocol has been devised. QMR-AODV is multi-radio compatible and provides delay guarantees on end-to-end paths. The inherited problem of AODV’s network wide flooding has been solved by selectively forwarding the routing queries on specified interfaces. The QoS based delay routing metric, combined with the selective route request forwarding, reduces the routing overhead from 24% up to 36% and produces 40.4% to 55.89% less network delays for traffic profiles of 10 to 60 flows, respectively. A distributed channel assignment scheme has been proposed for competitive WMNs, where the problem has been investigated by applying the concepts from non-cooperative bargaining Game Theory in two stages. In the first stage of the game, individual nodes of the non-cooperative setup is considered as the unit of analysis, where sufficient and necessary conditions for the existence of Nash Equilibrium (NE) and Negotiation-Proof Nash Equilibrium (N-PNE) have been derived. A distributed algorithm has been presented with perfect information available to the nodes of the network. In the presence of perfect information, each node has the knowledge of interference experience by the channels in its collision domain. The game converges to N-PNE in finite time and the average fairness achieved by all the nodes is greater than 0.79 (79%) as measured through Jain Fairness Index. Since N-PNE and NE are not always a system optimal solutions when considered from the end-nodes prospective, the model is further extended to incorporate non-cooperative end-users bargaining between two end user’s Mesh Access Points (MAPs), where an increase of 10% to 27% in end-to-end throughput is achieved. Furthermore, a non-cooperative game theoretical model is proposed for end-users flow routing in a multi-radio multi-channel WMNs. The end user nodes are selfish and compete for the channel resources across the WMNs backbone, aiming to maximize their own benefit without taking care for the overall system optimization. The end-to-end throughputs achieved by the flows of an end node and interference experienced across the WMNs backbone are considered as the performance parameters in the utility function. Theoretical foundation has been drawn based on the concepts from the Game Theory and necessary conditions for the existence of NE have been extensively derived. A distributed algorithm running on each end node with imperfect information has been implemented to assess the usefulness of the proposed mechanism. The analytical results have proven that a pure strategy Nash Equilibrium exists with the proposed necessary conditions in a game of imperfect information. Based on a distributed algorithm, the game converges to a stable state in finite time. The proposed game theoretical model provides a more reasonable solution with a standard deviation of 2.19Mbps as compared to 3.74Mbps of the random flow routing. Finally, the Price of Anarchy (PoA) of the system is close to one which shows the efficiency of the proposed scheme.The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF HETEROGENEOUS NETWORKS USING COALITIONAL GAMES

ABSTRACT A network which is best suited for a user in a heterogeneous wireless environment is selected by using a Game Theory technique. A statistical game theoretical model is developed by positioning the users randomly, setting-up the base stations of WiMAX and 3G as per standards of ITU and defining the Grade of Service (GoS) for each type of network respectively. Several parameters such as Received signal strength (RSS), Reputation factor, Energy utility, Cost utility and Mobility support are considered. With these parameters the Utility function payoffs are estimated for all the users. With the calculated Payoffs, an algorithm is designed for a best network selection by implementing Coalitional Game Theory principles. Performance estimation is done to demonstrate the Game Theory principles stand and compare with conventional network selection schemes

OFDMA-based resource allocation for wireless communication systems

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Review on Radio Resource Allocation Optimization in LTE/LTE-Advanced using Game Theory

Recently, there has been a growing trend toward ap-plying game theory (GT) to various engineering fields in order to solve optimization problems with different competing entities/con-tributors/players. Researches in the fourth generation (4G) wireless network field also exploited this advanced theory to overcome long term evolution (LTE) challenges such as resource allocation, which is one of the most important research topics. In fact, an efficient de-sign of resource allocation schemes is the key to higher performance. However, the standard does not specify the optimization approach to execute the radio resource management and therefore it was left open for studies. This paper presents a survey of the existing game theory based solution for 4G-LTE radio resource allocation problem and its optimization

A Survey on Dynamic Spectrum Access Techniques in Cognitive Radio Networks

The idea of Cognitive Radio (CR) is to share the spectrum between a user called primary, and a user called secondary. Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is a new spectrum sharing paradigm in cognitive radio that allows secondary users to access the abundant spectrum holes in the licensed spectrum bands. DSA is an auspicious technology to alleviate the spectrum scarcity problem and increase spectrum utilization. While DSA has attracted many research efforts recently, in this paper, a survey of spectrum access techniques using cooperation and competition to solve the problem of spectrum allocation in cognitive radio networks is presented