A nash equilibrium based fair user pairing algorithm for the cooperative network coding in multiple access relay systems

In this paper, user pairing within network coding for multiple access relaying systems is studied. Focusing on the scenario that consists of multiple users, one relay and one base station, the relay helps two users transmit messages to base station sharing the same resource block. A proper user pairing approach within network coding is necessary to further improve the system performance. Game theory is utilized to model the user pairing problem as a non-cooperative game. The Nash equilibrium (NE) provides a theoretical solution for the referred problem. Since the NE is not always unique, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to approach a quasi-equilibrium. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can improve the pairing fairness and the worst user's performance.