Bargaining and the MISO Interference Channel

We examine the MISO interference channel under cooperative bargaining theory. Bargaining approaches such as the Nash and Kalai-Smorodinsky solutions have previously been used in wireless networks to strike a balance between max-sum efficiency and max-min equity in users’ rates. However, cooperative bargaining for the MISO interference channel has only been studied extensively for the two-user case. We present an algorithm that finds the optimal Kalai-Smorodinsky beamformers for an arbitrary number of users. We also consider joint scheduling and beamformer selection, using gradient ascent to find a stationary point of the Kalai-Smorodinsky objective function. When interference is strong, the flexibility allowed by scheduling compensates for the performance loss due to local optimization. Finally, we explore the benefits of power control, showing that power control provides nontrivial throughput gains when the number of transmitter/receiver pairs is greater than the number of transmit antennas.