Performance Analysis of a Multiuser Multipath Communication System: a Game Theoretical Approach

Abstract

The study of multipath communication technologies is a hot research area today. One natural effect of using multipath communication instead of the single path one is the higher throughput value which will result in a better performance, not only in the usual Internet communication, but also in Big Data centers where the communication infrastructure can appear as a bottleneck point of the system. In this paper, we introduce a new game theoretical model for the evaluation of multiuser-multipath communication technologies. The decision problem for the users (i.e. network clients) is studied in a multipath communication system. We develop a game theoretical model for client payoff maximization, where the decision variables for each client are defined as their path requests. Due to limited hardware performance and limited service capacity, we assume that each client's payoff depends on other clients' path requests. We apply the tools of game theory to describe equilibrium behavior of the clients in the given interaction situation. By providing two examples, we show that our model is suitable for measuring payoffs, both in money and in throughput. We also offer possible directions for the further development of our model.