Coalition-Based Approaches for Joint Power Control and Relay Selection in Cooperative Networks

This paper introduces the novel concepts for decentralized relay-selection schemes based on the coalitional game theory that establishes the dynamic formation of coalitions in a wireless relay network. We present an efficient power-allocation protocol for wireless data transmission among coalitions based on a noncooperative power control game. Through this theoretical framework, source nodes are able to form stable coalitions and set their transmission power in a completely distributed fashion. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves a significant reduction in power consumption and an improvement in payoff for the transmitter nodes when compared with the noncooperative power control game with pricing (NPGP). We investigate the optimality of such joint relay-selection and power-allocation problems to affirm the performance of the proposed scheme. We propose an iterative joint relay-selection and power-allocation algorithm with a low degree of complexity and show that the distributed scheme achieves a comparable performance with the centralized case.