Pricing and Distributed Power Control for Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider a wireless amplify-and- forward relay network with one relay node and multiple source-destination pairs/users and propose a compensation framework such that the relay has incentives to forward the users' signals. Specifically, depending on the quality of the received signals, the relay sets the prices to maximize its revenue and correspondingly charges the users utilizing the relay for their transmissions. Given the specified price, the users competitively employ the relay node to forward their signals. We model each user as a strategic player, which aims at maximizing its own net utility through power allocation, and apply non-cooperative game theory to analyze the competition among the users. It is shown that, in the game played by the users, there always exists a unique Nash equilibrium point that can be achieved through distributed iterations. Then, subject to the availability of complete information about the users at the relay, we propose a low- complexity uniform pricing algorithm and an optimal differentiated pricing algorithm, in which the relay charges the users at a sub-optimal uniform price and at different prices, respectively.