A Non-cooperative Perspective of Multi-user Communications

The scarcity of spectrum is becoming an impediment to the growth of more capable wireless networks. Several measures are sought to address this problem: Freeing up unused spectrum, sharing of spectrum through new paradigms such as cognitive radio sensing, as well as sophisticated communication schemes that rely on user cooperation.

However, given that cooperation can lead to rate degradation when sharing spectrum, this may fail to happen with selfish users. This leads us to question: why would users cooperate in sharing? What happens if they don’t? How can we incentivize them to cooperate? We consider these questions in a prototypical communication channel model, the Gaussian interference channel in the context of cognitive radio systems. We propose contract designs for spectrum sharing using multi-user communication schemes that are robust to strategic manipulation by participating players, and can be made robust to the Moral hazard problem through simple enhancements. These can be seen as a stepping stone towards development of a Non-cooperative framework for Multi-user Communication Theory.

Bio: Rahul Jain is an Assistant Professor in the EE and ISE departments in the Viterbi School of Engineering of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He received his B.Tech in EE from IIT Kanpur, an MA in Statistics and a PhD in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley. He has diverse research interests with current focus on Game Theory and Economics of Networks, and Stochastic Control and Learning. He is a recipient of the Early Faculty Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and a James H. Zumberge Faculty research and innovation award.