Coalitional Games in Cooperative Radio Networks

The framework of coalitional game theory is used to study the formation of coalitions in an M-link wireless interference channel when either the transmitters or the receivers cooperate. It is shown that the stable coalition structure, i.e., the coalition structure for which users have no incentives to defect, depends upon the apportioning scheme chosen to distribute the cooperative rate gains between the coalition members. Under both a flexible (transferable) and fixed (non-transferable) apportioning scheme, the stable coalitions formed by cooperating receivers are presented. The problem of determining stable coalitions for the case of cooperating transmitters is discussed.