Shannon Meets Nash on the Interference Channel

TL;DR

This paper integrates game theory and information theory to characterize the Nash equilibrium region in interference channels, providing exact results for deterministic models and approximate solutions for Gaussian models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel game-theoretic framework for interference channels and characterizes the Nash equilibrium region for both deterministic and Gaussian cases.

Findings

Exact Nash region for two-user deterministic interference channel

Approximate Nash region for Gaussian interference channel within 1 bit/s/Hz

Framework captures selfish user behavior in shared communication resources

Abstract

The interference channel is the simplest communication scenario where multiple autonomous users compete for shared resources. We combine game theory and information theory to define a notion of a Nash equilibrium region of the interference channel. The notion is game theoretic: it captures the selfish behavior of each user as they compete. The notion is also information theoretic: it allows each user to use arbitrary communication strategies as it optimizes its own performance. We give an exact characterization of the Nash equilibrium region of the two-user linear deterministic interference channel and an approximate characterization of the Nash equilibrium region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel to within 1 bit/s/Hz..