A noncooperative power control game for multirate CDMA data networks

The authors consider a multirate code-division multiple acess system, in which all users have the same chip rate and vary their data rate by adjusting the processing gain. The receivers are assumed to be implemented using conventional matched filters, whose performance is sensitive to the received power levels. The authors´ goal is to maximize the total system throughput by means of power control. A game theoretic approach is adopted. It is shown that for a certain type of pricing function, a unique Nash equilibrium solution exists and it possesses nice global properties. For example, it can be shown that for the optimal solution a high-rate connection should maintain a higher energy per bit than low-rate ones. The asymptotic spectral efficiency is also derived.