Wardrop Equilibrium for CDMA Systems

In this contribution, the performance of an uplink CDMA system is analyzed in the context of frequency selective fading channels. Using game theoretic tools, a useful framework is provided in order to determine the optimal power allocation when users know only their own channel (while perfect channel state information is assumed at the base station). We consider the realistic case of frequency selective channels. This scenario illustrates the case of decentralized schemes and aims at reducing the downlink signaling overhead. Various receivers are considered, namely the Matched filter, the MMSE filter and the optimum filter. The goal of this paper is to derive simple expressions for the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium as the number of mobiles becomes large. To that end we combine two asymptotic methodologies. The first is asymptotic random matrix theory which allows us to obtain explicit expressions for the impact of all other mobiles on any given tagged mobile. The second is the theory of non-atomic games along with the Wardrop equilibrium concept which allows us to compute good approximations of the Nash equilibrium as the number of mobiles grow.