A game-theoretic approach to decentralized optimal power allocation for cellular networks

The rapidly growing demand for wireless communication makes efficient power allocation a critical factor in the network’s efficient operation. Power allocation in cellular networks with interference, where users are selfish, has been recently studied by pricing methods. However, pricing methods do not result in efficient/optimal power allocations for such systems for the following reason. Because of interference, the communication between the Base Station (BS) and a given user is affected by that between the BS and all other users. Thus, the power vector consisting of the transmission power in each BS-user link can be viewed as a public good which simultaneously affects the utilities of all the users in the network. It is well known (Mas-Colell et al., Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press, London, 2002, Chap. 11.C) that in public good economies, standard efficiency theorems on market equilibrium do not apply and pricing mechanisms do not result in globally optimal allocations. In this paper we study power allocation in the presence of interference for a single cell wireless Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network from a game theoretic perspective. We consider a network where each user knows only its own utility and the channel gain from the base station to itself. We formulate the uplink power allocation problem as a public good allocation problem. We present a game form the Nash Equilibria of which yield power allocations that are optimal solutions of the corresponding centralized uplink network.