A hierarchical framework of dynamic relay selection for mobile users and profit maximization for service providers in wireless relay networks

Abstract

Although extensive research has been carried out on the issue of how to optimally select relays in wireless relay networks, relay selection for mobile users is still a challenging problem because of the requirement that the dynamic selection should adapt to user mobility. Moreover, because the selected relays consume their energy on relaying data for the users, it is required that the users have to pay for this relay service. The price of selecting relays will affect the users' decisions. Assuming that different relays can belong to different service providers, we consider the situation that the service providers can strategically set the prices of their relays to maximize their profits. In this paper, we jointly study the dynamic relay selection for mobile users and profit maximization for service providers. Also, we design a Stackelberg‐game hierarchical framework to obtain the solution. At the lower level, we investigate the relay selection problem for the mobile users under given prices of selecting the relays. It is formulated as a Markov decision process problem with the objective to minimize the mobile user's long‐term average cost (which consists of the payment to the relay service and the cost due to packet loss), and solved by applying the linear programming technique. At the upper level, we study the game of setting relay prices for the service providers, with the knowledge that the mobile users will make relay selections based on their given prices. Nash equilibrium is obtained as the solution. Our results can help to provide a guidance for service providers to compete for providing relay services. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dynamic cooperative media access control for wireless networks

“…As well known, the system performance with cooperative communications is tightly related to the selected helpers, and thus, various helper selection algorithms [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] are proposed. Some works that select the helper to maximize the throughput or channel capacity are proposed in [6][7][8][9][10][11]. In [6], the authors proposed a distributed protocol of multi-user cooperative helper with buyer/seller game theoretic framework, which could select the suitable helpers and improve the system performance.…”

“…The authors in investigated the interference caused by employing relays and proposed two approaches with complete and incomplete information in game theory. In , the authors jointly studied dynamic relay selection for mobile users and profit maximization for service providers and designed a Stackelberg‐game hierarchical framework to obtain the solution. In , the authors studied the problem of helpers’ assignment to maximize the total capacity of the network in cooperative networks, where multiple source‐destination transmission pairs share the same set of helpers.…”