Shannon meets Walras on interference networks

In modern wireless communication networks, the layers of the protocol stack close ranks. Technology based layers like the PHY and MAC layer are developed considering assumptions and constraints on the service and application layers. The coexistence of several wireless transmission links operated by different users or operators requires interference coordination on the PHY and MAC. Bilateral agreements or policies consider business aspects and regulatory specifications. In this context, models from multiuser information theory are combined with microeconomic models. There are several connections between both areas: the utility functions and capacities or achievable rates, the strategy spaces and resources or coding schemes, the budget sets and the constraints on powers or rates. In this paper, we focus on one market equilibrium, the Walras equilibrium, and develop a distributed algorithm which finds an efficient operating point for three representative interference channel models: power allocation and single user decoding, beamforming and single user decoding, and rate splitting with successive decoding.