Distributed Scheduling and Dynamic Pricing in a Communication Network

This paper studies dynamic resource allocation in a decentralized communication network. The temporal aspect in the decentralized resource allocation problem presents new challenges, e.g., in optimizing the delay-throughput trade-off under user-specific delay costs. A dynamic bandwidth allocation game modelling an agent-based network is presented. The dynamic noncooperative game achieves Pareto-efficient bandwidth allocation that can be implemented by a greedy algorithm with pricing. Optimal dynamic pricing is discussed for the efficient sharing of network resources. An ad hoc wireless network is an example of such self-organizing decentralized system: the mobile nodes need not be directly connected to a base station. Another application of the model is to consider distributed uplink scheduling, based on local information, in a WCDMA network. The discretized control variable of a mobile node is either the received power/QoS-level or the binary decision on packet transmission.