Multiple partner selection in cooperative OFDM networks using an auction strategy

Cooperative diversity is a form of distributed spatial diversity achieved by cooperative communication among mobile users in cellular or wireless data networks. The problem of selecting suitable partners for a cooperative strategy is more complex when prospective partners have links of dissimilar quality to a central destination, leading to the possibility of non-reciprocal cooperation. We analyze self-configuring cooperative orthogonal frequency-division multiplex wireless networks under conditions of minimal topology and channel link information available to individual users. For such cases, a robust auction-theoretic mechanism is proposed for the selection of single as well as multiple simultaneous cooperative partners. We characterize equilibrium strategies and revenue for the multiple-object second-price auction for multi-carrier cooperation, under conditions of uncertainty in the number of users requesting cooperation. The proposed auction-theoretic selection scheme is shown to be a robust decentralized solution for improving the outage probability in dynamic cooperative wireless systems.