The Analysis of a Game Theoretic MAC Protocol for Wireless Networks

We give a rigorous mathematical analysis of a game-theoretic MAC protocol for wireless networks. We begin with a wireless communication network in which n selfish nodes (agents), which might have different perceived utilities, contend for access on a common wireless communication channel. We first formulate this distributed multiple access problem in terms of a one-shot random access game, and characterize the Nash equilibria of the game. We then look at the asymptotic properties of the system as n rarr infin. When all nodes are identical, the best possible bounds on the rate of convergence of the asymptotic packet arrivals and the channel throughput are given. The analysis of the asymptotic packet arrivals in the heterogeneous case concludes the paper