Robust spectrum management with incomplete information

Abstract

This paper studies the problem of competitive spectrum management in the presence of channel estimation errors. In particular, we study the effect of the channel estimation error on the Bayesian Interference Game (BIG), in which two selfish wireless systems (players) share the same frequency band, where each player knows its own channel gains but does not know the other players channel gains. In the case where the channel is estimated perfectly, the BIG is known to have a spectrally efficient equilibrium point, which produces a higher payoff to both players than the trivial equilibrium, in which both players always interfere with each other. However, the assumption that each player knows its own channel gains impeccably is not practical due to estimation error. The latter leads to payoff perturbations, which can reduce spectral efficiency by driving the spectrally efficient equilibrium point unstable. In this paper, we show that the spectral efficiency is robust to small estimation errors; i.e., the BIGs spectrally efficient equilibrium point preserves its properties in the presence of estimation errors.