Cooperative ARQ via auction-based spectrum leasing

A novel distributed scheme that combines cooperative ARQ with the spectrum leasing paradigm is proposed and analyzed. The strategy harnesses the opportunistic gains of cooperative communications, while inherently providing a spectrum-rewarding incentive for the otherwise non-cooperative relays to assist the source´s transmission. As in cooperative ARQ, the source might decide to hand over the possible retransmission slots to nearby stations that were able to decode the original transmission. In the proposed scheme, however, in exchange for the cooperation, the relaying station is also awarded an opportunity to exploit the retransmission slot for its own traffic. Arbitration of relays´ retransmissions is performed via an auction mechanism, with the source, the competing relays and the transmission slot acting as the auctioneer, the bidders and the bidding article, respectively. Auction theory (more generally, the theory of Bayesian games) is applied to analyze the scheme performance. It is noted that the setting here can be alternatively seen as a practical framework for implementation of property-rights cognitive radio networks. Numerical results and analysis show that the proposed scheme enables an efficient dynamic resource allocation that provides relevant gains (e.g., transmission reliability) for both the original source (primary) and the cooperating nodes (secondary users).