Hierarchical game theory analysis in subscribers cooperative relaying network with OFDMA orthogonal channels

A two-user decision making game is studied in the OFDM based subscriber cooperative relaying network, in which subscribers transmit their own data in the first phase, while helping to retransmit their partner's or choosing to freeride in the second phase. In the paper, we study a hierarchical game (HG) for a two user coalition, where cooperation is preferred and total payoff is transferable. Instead of consulting to a global optimal solution, we decouple the cooperation resource allocation into two level subproblems: a user level Nash equilibrium game for distributed cooperation decision and an access point (AP) level coalition game for centralized resource allocation. Meanwhile, due to the consideration of efficiency and immediacy, we reduce a repeated game theory into a scheduling evaluation across two scheduling time slots-the second cooperation phase in the first time slot and the first self-transmission phase in the next slot. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a well tradeoff between fairness and efficiency, and greatly reduces the system complexity compared to the centralized resource allocation strategies.