Potential Game Convergence of Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Development of a system in which several unlicensed users strive to access the vacant licensed bands is a highly challenging task, especially in ad hoc networks where no centralized infrastructure exists. These unlicensed users, also called cognitive radios, must compete for the available frequency slots. The convergence of this system is difficult to achieve if nodes perform no information exchange and solely depend on their individual actions. In this paper, we analyze the cognitive radio networks for distributed channel allocation. It is observed that convergence is easier to establish in cooperative systems or systems where users perform information exchange. This kind of cooperative behavior can be enforced by providing incentives to nodes. The cooperation leads to an improvement in overall network performance as compared to the selfish users who are concerned only with their individual benefits.