Game Theory and Networking

With the 4th generation technology (4G), only being deployed for a few years, 5G technology is slowly emerging to support the Internet of things (IoT), where millions of sensors and mobile devices will be deployed in order to provide data for smart homes, smart buildings and smart cities. 5G networks will have to handle data (collection, storage, mining, analysis, etc.) gathered from a very diverse set of sources like traffic, weather, security incidents, crowds, etc. Data analytics and network management are thus necessary for 5G deployment. IoT includes sensors and mobile devices that gather data and perform data mining on data to anticipate certain circumstances, including human behaviour. Some issues that may arise from the deployment of 5G and IoT include new security issues because of the IoT deployment, and additional issues surfacing due to the increasing use of wearable devices. Since any communication network, such as IoT, is a multi-entity system, decisions are taken by different system entities. Such decision-making entities are the “things” in IoT, i.e. the sensors comprising the sensor networks that offer the capability to create smart spaces and applications, the users of the IoT, the content and service providers using the IoT as their infrastructure, etc. All entities are motivated to make decisions that maximize their own potential benefit, whether this is experience, profit, minimal resource usage or any other factor that may result in high utility measurements or high satisfaction for these entities. The book will explore specific interactions using a game theoretic framework and offer the equilibriums that maximize the payoffs of the interacting entities.