Spectrum mobility games

Cognitive radio gives users the ability to switch channels and make use of dynamic spectral opportunities. However, switching channels takes time, and may disrupt the quality of a users transmission. When a cognitive radio user’s channel becomes unavailable, they may be better switching channels, or they may be better waiting until their current channel becomes available again. In this paper we suppose that users are given a database of information about the channel availabilities over the coming time slots. Given this information, each user must decide when and how to switch channels. The users wish to exploit spectrum opportunities, but they must take account of the cost of switching channels and the congestion that comes from sharing channels with one another. We model the scenario as a game which (as we show), is equivalent to a network congestion game. This allows us to design protocol which the users can apply to find Nash equilibria (i.e., mutually acceptable sets of action ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Richard Southwell, Jianwei Huang, Xin Liu
• Keywords: Action Choices, Communications, INFOCOM 2012, Nash Equilibria, Network Congestion