State‐based potential power allocation game in a cooperative multiuser network

Abstract

Multiuser cooperative communications represent a research area of great interest constituting a key technology for future wireless networks. In this study, the authors consider a scenario of multi-user, single-relay network, where each user employs a part of the relay's transmission power taking into account the constraint of the total transmission power of the relay. The problem of relay power allocation to individual users with a view to optimising the long-term network performance is investigated. An adequate utility function is defined, in terms of outage probability, evaluating the cooperative network's performance due to the relay's cooperation. Taking into consideration the distributed nature of cooperative networks along with the coupled constraint of relay's total transmission power, the specific problem is transformed from a network-level to a user-level optimisation problem using a modern game-theoretic tool. More specifically, the initial power allocation problem is formulated as a state-based potential game for which the corresponding Nash equilibrium exists. Finally, a gradient learning mechanism is proposed to achieve the stationary state Nash equilibrium of the game that constitutes also the global optimal solution of the initial problem. The performance of the new proposed scheme is investigated through numerical simulations for various network parameters.