Robust Stackelberg game in communication systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust Stackelberg game framework for multi-user communication systems, accounting for uncertainties in system information and observations, and analyzes how these uncertainties impact the utilities of leaders and followers.

Contribution

It develops a robust equilibrium concept for Stackelberg games in communication systems, considering uncertainties in information and observations, and analyzes their effects on utilities.

Findings

Uncertain parameters increase leaders' utilities.

Uncertain parameters decrease followers' utilities.

Numerical results demonstrate the impact in power control games.

Abstract

This paper studies multi-user communication systems with two groups of users: leaders which possess system information, and followers which have no system information using the formulation of Stackelberg games. In such games, the leaders play and choose their actions based on their information about the system and the followers choose their actions myopically according to their observations of the aggregate impact of other users. However, obtaining the exact value of these parameters is not practical in communication systems. To study the effect of uncertainty and preserve the players' utilities in these conditions, we introduce a robust equilibrium for Stackelberg games. In this framework, the leaders' information and the followers' observations are uncertain parameters, and the leaders and the followers choose their actions by solving the worst-case robust optimizations. We show that the followers' uncertain parameters always increase the leaders' utilities and decrease the followers' utilities. Conversely, the leaders' uncertain information reduces the leaders' utilities and increases the followers' utilities. We illustrate our theoretical results with the numerical results obtained based on the power control games in the interference channels.