Energy-efficient power allocation for selfish cooperative communication networks using bargaining game

Abstract

In commercial networks, user nodes operating on batteries are assumed to be selfish to consume their energy solely to maximize their own benefits, e.g., data rates. In this paper, we propose a bargaining game to perform the power allocation for the selfish cooperative communication networks. In our system, two partner nodes can act as a source as well as a relay for each other, and each node is with an energy constraint to transmit one frame. Consider a selfish node is willing to seek cooperative transmission only if the data rate achieved through cooperation will not lower than that achieved through noncooperation by using the same amount of energy. The energy-efficient power allocation problem can be modeled as a cooperative game. We proved that there exists a unique Nash bargaining solution (NBS) for the game by verifying that the game is indeed a bargaining problem. Thus, the two objectives, i.e., system efficiency and user fairness specified in the selfish networks can be achieved. Simulation results show that the NBS scheme is efficient in that the performance loss of the NBS scheme to that of the maximal overall rate scheme is small while the maximal-rate scheme is unfair. The simulation results also show that the NBS result is fair in that both nodes could experience better performance than they work independently and the degree of cooperation of a node only depends on how much contribution its partner can make to improve its own performance.