A new bandwidth allocation scheme for dual-hop transmission using virtual oligopoly market model and Cournot competition

We propose a new bandwidth allocation scheme for two-hop transmission. The fixed relay network is modeled as a virtual oligopoly market, and the Cournot game model is exploited in order to solve the resource allocation problem. Two different types of Cournot competition, namely static and dynamic, are discussed. For the latter case, the stability conditions are analyzed. By using the proposed scheme, the source purchases the optimum amount of bandwidth from each relay, given a specific budget; therefore, the scarce wireless resources are exploited efficiently. Moreover, as the only required signaling among the nodes is the price and the required amount of bandwidth, the feedback and signaling overhead is minimized. In order to evaluate the proposed scheme, analytical and numerical results are presented.