Cooperation and Conflict: Coalitional Games in Spectrum Sharing

合作与冲突：频谱共享中的联盟博弈合作通信技术有望促进高效的频谱共享，许多重要研究已经研究了协作信号处理、协作编码、中继和转发等方法。在研究研究中可能不太普遍地考虑的是，合作可能涉及巨大的成本，最大的直接利益不一定会流向承担最大直接成本的用户。例如，合作可能需要终端延迟其自己的传输，并使用其有限的能量预算来为其他终端中继消息。此外，即使在能源或延迟方面没有增加成本，分配利益的规则也可能对合作造成另一种阻碍。因此，即使在没有任何合作交易成本的情况下，用户合作的总收益也只能通过为每个用户和每笔交易提供充分激励的技术来实现。该项目使用联盟博弈论作为框架，对合作沟通的动态以及可能实现这种合作的激励机制提供了重要的洞察。将博弈论模型与通信和信息理论相结合，研究的合作机制有：(1)接收方合作中的联盟，(2)发送方合作中的联盟，以及(3)联盟形成中的激励和成本。该项目正在为联盟形成的知识和技术做出贡献，这些知识和技术可以改善认知无线电网络的频谱共享。理论研究活动的一个教育补充是使用轨道测试床来评估简单实用的联盟形成机制。

Mandayam, NarayanRutgers Univ New BrunswickCooperation and Conflict: Coalitional Games in Spectrum SharingCooperative communication techniques hold the promise of promoting efficient spectrum sharing and a good deal of important research has studied approaches such as collaborative signal processing, cooperative coding, relaying and forwarding. What is perhaps less generally considered in research studies is that cooperation may involve significant costs, and that the greatest immediate benefits will not necessarily go to the users that bear the greatest immediate cost. For example, cooperation may require that a terminal delay its own transmissions and use its limited energy budget to relay messages for other terminals. Moreover, even if there were no added cost in terms of energy or delay, the rules by which the benefit is distributed may create yet another type of disincentive to cooperation. Thus, even in the absence of any transaction costs for cooperation, the aggregate benefits of user cooperation can only be realized through techniques that provide adequate incentives to each user, and for each transaction.This project is using coalitional game theory as a framework to provide significant insight into the dynamics of cooperative communications as well as the incentives through which such cooperation might be achieved. Integrating models from game theory with communications and information theory, the cooperation mechanisms being studied are: (1) coalitions in receiver cooperation, (2) coalitions in transmitter cooperation, and (3) incentives and costs in coalition formation. This project is contributing to the knowledge and technology of coalition formation that can result in improved spectrum sharing in cognitive radio networks. An educational supplement to the theoretical research activities is using the ORBIT Testbed for evaluating simple practical coalition formation mechanisms.