A MAC level strategy for dynamic resource allocation in Cognitive Radio tactical networks

The ability to continuously self-adapt to the variations of the radio environment will be an interesting issue for future tactical radio networks. Cognitive Radio (CR) is the main enabling paradigm allowing the self-adaptation process in military communications minimizing the human intervention in the network management operations. In this paper we provide a MAC-level solution based on a game theoretic framework that covers these open issues. Thinking to the CR devices in the network as players of the same game, the resource allocation problem can be formulated as a S-Modular Game, since it provides a set of helpful tools aimed at defining multi-objective distributed algorithms in the radio-communications context. On the base of the proposed solution, CR devices are able to hierarchically self-configure the network and share the radio resources in a fair and energy-efficient way. Simulation results presented in this paper has been obtained within the CORASMA project and they show the good performance of the proposed solution for cognitive radio tactical networks.