Blockage-Peeking Game of Mobile Strategic Nodes in Millimeter Wave Communications

TL;DR

This paper models the strategic interaction between a mobile mmWave receiver and an adversary blocking its line of sight as a game, analyzing their optimal strategies and equilibrium states to improve understanding of communication robustness.

Contribution

It introduces a game-theoretic framework for analyzing mobile mmWave communication under adversarial blockage, deriving Nash equilibria for strategic movement and obstruction.

Findings

Nash equilibrium strategies for receiver and adversary identified

Connection established between equilibrium and beamforming patterns

Insights into optimal movement and blocking tactics in mmWave systems

Abstract

Given the importance of line-of-sight in mmWave communications, a strategic adversary can harm a transmission by obstructing the receiver, which in turn can react by trying to move around this hurdle. To expand on this point, we study one such scenario from the perspective of game theory, considering a mobile mmWave receiver and an adversary interacting strategically as players in a zero-sum game, where they want to maximize, or respectively minimize, the spectral efficiency of the communication. To do so, the adversary attempts at screening the receiver's line of sight as an obstacle, while the receiver can move around so as to avoid the blockage. We consider preset distances and the choices available to the players are to change their angular coordinates to go around each other. This is framed as a static game of complete information, for which we numerically find the Nash equilibrium in mixed strategies, drawing some interesting conclusions such as connecting it with the beamforming pattern of the transmitter.