A Cut-off Phenomenon in Location Based Random Access Games with Imperfect Information

TL;DR

This paper studies the strategic behavior of selfish wireless transmitters with imperfect location information, revealing a cut-off phenomenon in their transmission strategies and characterizing Nash equilibria in such networks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of location-based random access games with imperfect information, identifying a cut-off strategy and providing equilibrium conditions.

Findings

Packet success probability depends on node-sink separation.

Best-response strategies exhibit a monotonic cut-off property.

Conditions for Nash equilibrium are explicitly characterized.

Abstract

This paper analyzes the behavior of selfish transmitters under imperfect location information. The scenario considered is that of a wireless network consisting of selfish nodes that are randomly distributed over the network domain according to a known probability distribution, and that are interested in communicating with a common sink node using common radio resources. In this scenario, the wireless nodes do not know the exact locations of their competitors but rather have belief distributions about these locations. Firstly, properties of the packet success probability curve as a function of the node-sink separation are obtained for such networks. Secondly, a monotonicity property for the best-response strategies of selfish nodes is identified. That is, for any given strategies of competitors of a node, there exists a critical node-sink separation for this node such that its best-response is to transmit when its distance to the sink node is smaller than this critical threshold, and to back off otherwise. Finally, necessary and sufficient conditions for a given strategy profile to be a Nash equilibrium are provided.