Power Allocation and Spectrum Sharing in Multi-User, Multi-Channel Systems with Strategic Users

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized mechanism for power allocation and spectrum sharing in multi-user, multi-channel systems with strategic users, ensuring desirable economic and fairness properties without restrictive utility assumptions.

Contribution

It proposes a novel game form that guarantees individual rationality, budget balance, and Pareto optimality at Nash equilibria without utility function restrictions.

Findings

Achieves Pareto optimal allocations at all Nash equilibria.

Ensures budget balance both at and off equilibrium.

Works without assumptions on utility function properties.

Abstract

We consider the decentralized power allocation and spectrum sharing problem in multi-user, multi-channel systems with strategic users. We present a mechanism/game form that has the following desirable features. (1) It is individually rational. (2) It is budget balanced at every Nash equilibrium of the game induced by the game form as well as off equilibrium. (3) The allocation corresponding to every Nash equilibrium (NE) of the game induced by the mechanism is a Lindahl allocation, that is a weakly Pareto optimal allocation. Our proposed game form/mechanism achieves all the above desirable properties without any assumption about, concavity, differentiability, monotonicity, or quasi-linearity of the users' utility functions.