Distributed Solution of GNEP over Networks via the Douglas-Rachford Splitting Method

The aim of this paper is to find the distributed solution of the generalized Nash equilibrium problem (GNEP) for a group of players that can communicate with each other over a connected communication network. Each player tries to minimize a local objective function of its own that may depend on the other players' decisions, and collectively all the players' decisions are subject to some globally shared resource constraints. After reformulating the local optimization problems, we introduce the notion of network Lagrangian and recast the GNEP as the zero finding problem of a properly defined operator. Utilizing the Douglas-Rachford operator splitting method, a distributed algorithm is proposed that requires only local information exchanges between neighboring players in each iteration. The convergence of the proposed algorithm to an exact variational generalized Nash equilibrium is established under two different sets of assumptions. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated using the example of a Nash-Cournot production game.