A Game Theoretic Approach to Irregular Repetition Slotted Aloha

Iman Hmedoush,Kinda Khawam,Cedric Adjih,Paul Muhlethaler

doi:10.1109/access.2022.3140495

Abstract

Many technological enhancements are being developed worldwide to enable the “Internet of Things” (IoT). IoT networks largely rely on distributed access of billions of devices, but are still lagging in terms of combined reliability and low latency. To mend that shortcoming, it is paramount to adapt existing random access methods for the IoT setting. In this article, we shed light on one of the modern candidates for random access protocols fitted for IoT: the “Irregular Repetition Slotted ALOHA” (IRSA). As self-managing solutions are needed to overcome the challenges of IoT, we study the IRSA random access scheme in a distributed setting where groups of users, with fixed traffic loads, are competing for ALOHA-type channel access. To that aim, we adopt a distributed game-theoretic approach where two classes of IoT devices learn autonomously their optimal IRSA protocol parameters to optimize selfishly their own effective throughput. Through extensive simulations, we assess the notable efficiency of the game based distributed approach. We also show that our IRSA game attains the Nash equilibrium (NE) via the “better reply” strategy, and we quantify the price of anarchy in comparison with a centralized approach. Our results imply that user competition does not fundamentally impact the performance of the IRSA protocol.

Highlights

2) ITERATED EQUATIONS FROM DENSITY EVOLUTION for completeness, and as common in the Irregular Repetition Slotted ALOHA’’ (IRSA) literature, we introduce the recursive equations Eqs. (1),(2),(3), that allow the iterative computation of intermediate quantities from which the asymptotic system performance (PLR (Packet Loss Rate), throughput) is derived in Eqs. (8),(9)
To be able to finely analyze the performance of IRSA, we prove some properties of the density evolution iterations, some of which are known for LDPC-codes [21] but need to be transposed to IRSA
NUMERICAL RESULTS In the following, we assess the performance of the distributed IRSA game, described in section IV, and present numerical verification that it attains Nash Equilibrium via the better reply strategy

Summary

Introduction

A. COMMUNICATION IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS The Internet of Things is a system of interrelated devices connected to the Internet to transfer data among each other. COMMUNICATION IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS The Internet of Things is a system of interrelated devices connected to the Internet to transfer data among each other It applies to more than just sensors or devices: it focuses on entire use-cases. With over 50 billion connected IoT devices expected by 2025, legacy approaches to resource management and channel access can no longer keep up. This is exacerbated with the ultra-dense IoT deployments, and with the increasing requirements for better throughput and energy efficiency.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion