Dynamic bargaining of content shares in wireless cooperative systems

Mobile devices provided with cellular and short-range radio network interface cards offer the user potentials for new communication paradigms based on a cooperative behavior. The idea is that devices in close proximity exchange, through available short-range links, complementary shares of information downloaded from the cellular connections. Results in the literature have proven equal benefits for all partners in terms of energy consumption, achieved data rate, and transfer time, under homogeneous conditions. Notwithstanding, there could be heterogeneous cooperative scenarios in which gains are not perceived, unless novel smart policies for the content splitting among cooperating entities are implemented. In this paper we design a novel cooperation strategy based on a multi-criteria optimization algorithm for the bargaining of the content fraction each cooperating unit shall download according to the predicted cellular throughput. It will be shown that it is able to always match the expectations of the cooperating partners.