Channel access competition in linear multihop device-to-device networks

We study a linear multihop network that is formed by wireless devices that can directly communicate pairwise whenever two devices are within range of each other. This Device-to-Device communication model is expected to play a significant role in future 5G wireless networks due to its advantages (e.g., cellular offloading, increased throughput and low cost/energy communication). In such networks, devices are typically selfish and compete for channel access aiming at maximizing their own throughput while at the same time avoiding packet collisions. In this setup, we study how an efficient coexistence of these devices may be achieved, using a game-theoretic approach. First, we model the contention for the channel as a game and study the structural properties of the resulting Nash Equilibria (NE). Then, we design a distributed, round-based scheme that is guaranteed to converge to a NE. We compare quantitatively and qualitatively this scheme with previous work. We show that this scheme converges faster to a NE, in a number of rounds that is proportional to the logarithm of the number of nodes of the network. Moreover, the convergence is monotonic, meaning that the percentage of nodes that finalize their strategy is increasing in each round.