Joint power and rate control for wireless ad hoc networks: a game-theoretical approach with step-up pricing

In contention-based wireless ad hoc networks, power control is an efficient way to improve the spatial reuse by allowing multiple pairs to communicate simultaneously. This paper suggests a game-theoretical approach for joint power and rate control in ad hoc networks, where each link tries to maximize its transmit rate while considering the transmit power as the cost, since higher power leads to higher interference and more energy consumption. In particular, we propose a novel step-up pricing algorithm in which the cost per unit power steps up until the network settles down at the first feasible power and rate allocation, even when the Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) requirements are initially infeasible. Numerical results show significant throughput improvement and energy consumption savings compared with the previously proposed algorithm that defers the link with minimum SINR. I. INTRODUCTION Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) have received much attention recently. Because of the scarce radio spectrum and energy limitation, efficient radio resource management such as transmit power control and rate adaptation are essential to MANETs.