Evolutionary non‐cooperative spectrum sharing game: long‐term coexistence for collocated cognitive radio networks

• Published in: Wireless communications and mobile computing Vol. 16; no. 15; pp. 2166 - 2178
• Main Authors: Amjad, Muhammad Faisal, Chatterjee, Mainak, Nakhila, Omar, Zou, Cliff C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Hindawi Limited 25.10.2016
• Subjects: Channels; coexistence; Cognitive radio; cognitive radio networks; Dynamics; evolutionarily stable strategy; Evolutionary; evolutionary game theory; Game theory; Games; Networks; Strategy
• ISSN: 1530-8669; 1530-8677
• DOI: 10.1002/wcm.2674

Collocated cognitive radio networks (CRNs) employ coexistence protocols to share the spectrum when it is not being used by the licensed primary users. These protocols work under the assumption that all spectrum bands provide the same level of quality of service, which is somewhat simplistic because channel conditions as well as the licensee's usage of allocated channels can vary significantly with time and space. These circumstances dictate that some channels may be considered better than others; therefore, CRNs are expected to have a preference over the choice of available channels. Because all CRNs are assumed to be rational and select the best available channels, it can lead to an imbalance in contention for disparate channels, degraded quality of service, and an overall inefficient utilization of spectrum resource. In this paper, we analyze this situation from a game theoretic perspective and model the coexistence of CRNs with heterogeneous spectrum as an evolutionary anti‐coordination spectrum‐sharing game. We derive the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) of the game by proving that it cannot be invaded by a greedy strategy. We also derive the replicator dynamics of the proposed evolutionary game, a mechanism with which players can learn from their payoff outcomes of strategic interactions and modify their strategies at every stage of the game and subsequently converge to ESS. Because all CRNs approach ESS based solely upon the common knowledge payoff observations, the evolutionary game can be implemented in a distributed manner. Finally, we analyze the game from the perspective of fairness using Jain's fairness index under selfish behavior from CRNs. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this paper, we analyze the coexistence of cognitive radio networks with heterogeneous spectrum as an evolutionary anti‐coordination spectrum sharing game. We derive the evolutionarily stable strategy of the game by proving that it cannot be invaded by a greedy strategy. We also derive the replicator dynamics of the proposed evolutionary game, a mechanism with which players can learn from their payoff outcomes of strategic interactions and modify their strategies at every stage of the game and subsequently converge to evolutionarily stable strategy.