A Game Theoretic Framework of Distributed Power and Rate Control in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In this paper, motivated by the need of a quantitative model for the power and rate control in IEEE 802.11 WLANs and the lack of related work in the literature, we address the problem by establishing a quantitative game theoretic framework. Our motivation of using game theoretic approach rather than global optimization approach is two-fold: 1) game theory is a powerful tool to model selfish behaviors and their impact on the system performance in distributed environments with self-interested players; 2) game theory can model the features or constraints of IEEE 802.11 WLANs such as lack of coordination and network feedback.