Non-cooperative resource competition game by virtual referee in multi-cell OFDMA networks

In this paper, a distributive non-cooperative game is proposed to perform sub-channel assignment, adaptive modulation, and power control for multi-cell multi-user orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) networks. Each individual user's goal is to minimize his/her own transmitted power in a distributed manner under the constraints that the desirable rate is achieved and the transmitted power is bounded. The pure non-cooperative game may result in non-convergence or some undesirable Nash Equilibriums with low system and individual performances. To enhance the performances, a virtual referee is introduced to the networks and is in charge of monitoring and improving the outcome of non-cooperative competition for resources among the distributed users. If the game outcome is not desirable, either the required transmission rates should be reduced or some users should be prevented from using some radio resources such as sub-channels, so that the rest of users can share the limited resources more efficiently. Moreover, it can be shown that the introduction of the virtual referee does not increase the complexity of the networks. From the simulation results in a two-cell case, the proposed scheme reduces the transmitted power by 80% and 25% compared with the fixed channel assignment algorithm and the iterative water-filling algorithm in the literature, respectively. The achievable rate can be improved by 10%. In a multi-cell case, the proposed scheme can have up to 40% power reduction compared with the iterative water-filling algorithm when the co-channel interferences are severe.