Competitive Spectrum Management with Incomplete Information

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a game-theoretic model of wireless spectrum sharing with incomplete information, proposing a non pure-FS epsilon-Nash equilibrium that enhances spectrum utilization and user throughput.

Contribution

It introduces a closed-form expression for a non pure-FS epsilon-Nash equilibrium in spectrum management games with incomplete information.

Findings

Non pure-FS epsilon-Nash equilibrium improves spectrum utilization.

Operating at this equilibrium increases individual user throughput.

Performance gains are significant depending on channel parameters.

Abstract

This paper studies an interference interaction (game) between selfish and independent wireless communication systems in the same frequency band. Each system (player) has incomplete information about the other player's channel conditions. A trivial Nash equilibrium point in this game is where players mutually full spread (FS) their transmit spectrum and interfere with each other. This point may lead to poor spectrum utilization from a global network point of view and even for each user individually. In this paper, we provide a closed form expression for a non pure-FS epsilon-Nash equilibrium point; i.e., an equilibrium point where players choose FDM for some channel realizations and FS for the others. We show that operating in this non pure-FS epsilon-Nash equilibrium point increases each user's throughput and therefore improves the spectrum utilization, and demonstrate that this performance gain can be substantial. Finally, important insights are provided into the behaviour of selfish and rational wireless users as a function of the channel parameters such as fading probabilities, the interference-to-signal ratio.