Stackelberg game theoretic pricing algorithm for bandwidth allocation in cooperative access

Abstract Cooperative access among user devices by sharing wireless access bandwidth opens a new paradigm in heterogeneous networks. However, how to stimulate cooperative relay nodes forwarding service data for others and allocating corresponding bandwidth to support it are two key issues in the cooperative access. This paper proposes a Stackelberg game based framework which is benefit participants including relay nodes and client nodes. This framework generalizes the pricing based bandwidth allocation algorithm by the Stackelberg game model, which optimizes the profit of the cooperative relay nodes while guaranteeing the bandwidth requirements of client nodes. We transform the profit maximization problem into a convex problem and solve it using the convex optimization method. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework and corresponding algorithms outperform the bidding weight proportional fairness and fixed value bandwidth allocation ones significantly.