Achieving User Cooperation Diversity in TDMA-Based Wireless Networks Using Cooperative Game Theory

In this letter, a two-person cooperative game is proposed to perform the resource allocation for time division multiple access (TDMA) based commercial cooperative communication networks. In the game, one selfish node could trade its own resource (data symbols and power) for its cooperative partner's relaying directly. And both the nodes are willing to achieve an optimal channel capacity increase through cooperative relaying. We prove that the game is indeed a two-person bargaining problem and use the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) method to obtain the unique solution of the game. Simulation results indicate that the NBS resource allocation is Pareto optimal, in that both nodes could experience better performance than if they work independently. Furthermore, and the NBS resource allocation is fair in that the degree of cooperation of a node only depends on how much contribution its partner can make to improve its own performance.