A survey on game-theoretic approaches to energy-efficient relay-assisted communications

Recent research on game-theoretic approaches for non-cooperative resource allocation in relay-assisted interference channels is reviewed in this paper. The considered utility function is the physical layer energy efficiency, which is measured in bit/J, and denotes the number of bits successfully delivered to the receiver for each energy unit drained from the battery. Both the cases in which the power dissipated in the transmitter circuit is included and not included in the utility functions are considered, and, also, the case in which there is a direct path between transmitters and receivers is briefly addressed. Analytic results on the existence of Nash equilibrium points are given, and extensive numerical results provide insight on the performance of the reviewed resource allocation algorithms.