Two-Dimensional Route Switching in Cognitive Radio Networks: A Game-Theoretical Framework

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), secondary users (SUs) can flexibly access primary users´ (PUs´) idle spectrum bands, but such spectrum opportunities are dynamic due to PUs´ uncertain activity patterns. In a multihop CRN consisting of SUs as relays, such spectrum dynamics will further cause the invalidity of predetermined routes. In this paper, we investigate spectrum-mobility-incurred route-switching problems in both spatial and frequency domains for CRNs, where spatial switching determines which relays and links should be reselected and frequency switching decides which channels ought to be reassigned to the spatial routes. The proposed route-switching scheme not only avoids conflicts with PUs but also mitigates spectrum congestion. Meanwhile, tradeoffs between routing costs and channel switching costs are achieved. We further formulate the route-switching problem as the Route-Switching Game, which is shown to be a potential game and has a pure Nash equilibrium (NE). Accordingly, efficient algorithms for finding the NE and the ε-NE are proposed. Then, we extend the proposed game to the incomplete-information scenario and provide a method to compute the Bayesian NE. Finally, we prove that the price of anarchy of the proposed game has a deterministic upper bound.