Power Allocation Games in Interference Relay Channels: Existence Analysis of Nash Equilibria

We consider a network composed of two interfering point-to-point links where the two transmitters can exploit one common relay node to improve their individual transmission rate. Communications are assumed to be multiband and transmitters are assumed to selfishly allocate their resources to optimize their individual transmission rate. The main objective of this paper is to show that this conflicting situation (modeled by a non-cooperative game) has some stable outcomes, namely Nash equilibria. This result is proved for three different types of relaying protocols: decode-and-forward, estimate-and-forward, and amplify-and-forward. We provide additional results on the problems of uniqueness, efficiency of the equilibrium, and convergence of a best-response based dynamics to the equilibrium. These issues are analyzed in a special case of the amplify-and-forward protocol and illustrated by simulations in general. Index Terms Cognitive radio, game theory, interference channel, interference relay channel, Nash equilibrium, power allocation games, relay channel.