Cooperative and non-cooperative wireless access : Resource and infrastructure sharing regimes

Future wireless networks will combine multiple radio technologies and subsystems, possibly managed by competing network providers. For such systems it may be advantageous to let the end nodes (terminals) make some or all of the resource management decisions. In addition to reducing complexity and costs, increasing redundancy, and facilitating more timely decisions; distributed resource sharing regimes can decouple the individual subsystems. Decoupled subsystems could be desirable both because competing operators can be business-wise separated and because it allows new technologies to be added (removed) in a modular fashion. However, distributed regimes can also lead to “selfish” wireless nodes who only try to maximize their own performance. The first part of this dissertation studies if selfish nodes can make efficient use of wireless resources, using multiaccess and network layers as examples. The related problems are formulated as noncooperative games between nodes. To maintain tractability nodes are confined to simple strategies that neither account for future payoffs nor allow for coordination. Yet, it is demonstrated that selfish nodes can achieve comparable performance to traditional protocols. These results should be interpreted as an argument in favor of distributed regimes. The second part of this dissertation evaluates the effects of multi-provider network architectures where users can roam freely across all networks. From a supply side perspective the benefits are improved path gain statistics and the fact that different networks may have non-overlapping busy hours. Several network configurations are analyzed and it is shown that cooperation between symmetric providers can yield significant capacity gains for both downlink and uplink; even if the providers have nearly collocated sites. When the providers have different site densities the gains from cooperation are reduced and the provider with a sparse network always gains more from cooperating. This suggests that initially, voluntary cooperation may be limited to some special cases. Lastly, the architecture is analyzed in a context where the providers compete for users on a per session basis by offering access at different prices. Although such architectures currently only exist in a few special cases, they could emerge in domestic markets where the costs to switch and search for new networks are low. Based on a game theoretic formulation it is shown that a competitive market for wireless access can be advantageous for both users and providers. The results presented suggest that the advantages of cooperation of competing providers occur in more than just a few cases.