Non-Cooperative Game Theoretic Power Allocation Strategy for Distributed Multiple-Radar Architecture in a Spectrum Sharing Environment

This paper investigates the problem of non-cooperative game theoretic power allocation (NGTPA) for distributed multiple-radar architectures in a spectrum sharing environment, where multiple radars coexist with a communication system in the same frequency band. The primary objective of the multiple-radar system is to minimize the power consumption of each radar by optimizing the transmission power allocation, which is constrained by a predefined signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio requirement for target detection and a maximum interference tolerant limit for communication system. Since each radar is rational and selfish to maximize its own utility, we utilize the non-cooperative game theoretic technique to tackle the distributed power allocation problem. Taking into consideration the target detection performance and received interference power at the communication receiver, a novel utility function is defined and employed as the optimization criterion for the NGTPA strategy. Furthermore, the existence and uniqueness of the proposed game’s Nash equilibrium point are analytically proved. An iterative power allocation algorithm with low computational complexity and fast convergence is developed, where the optimal value of each radar’s transmission power is simultaneously updated at the same time step. Numerical simulations are provided to verify the analysis and evaluate the performance of the proposed strategy as a function of the system parameters. It is shown that the distributed algorithm is effective for power allocation and could protect the communication system with limited implementation overhead.