Power auction and allocation for network-coded cooperation

Optimal resource allocation is critical to the efficiency of cooperative communications. In this paper, we develop an auction-based power allocation mechanism for network-coded cooperation in wireless networks, in which the sources compete for the relay power for maximum utility, while the relay node assigns the resource in accordance with the bids from the sources. Moreover, to improve the resource utilization, the relay node is allowed to perform network coding across the received information for the same destination. Finally, numerical results validate the performance of the proposed algorithm, and show that there exists a tradeoff between the system outage probability and the power consumed at the relay node.