Energy efficient transmission in relay-based cooperative networks using auction game

Considering the rampant growth of data traffic and exponential increasing energy consumption in recent years, energy efficiency is becoming more and more crucial in cooperative communication systems where the wireless devices are battery operated. In this paper, we focus on the energy efficient transmission problem in a one source relay-based cooperative network, aims to find the most energy efficient relay node for the source node when it broadcasts a cooperation-request. We model the relationship of the source node and the relay nodes as a first price auction game, when the source node needs cooperation, the relay nodes compete for it and the one who sends a bid which can minimize the cost of the source node for cooperating is selected. If the relay node wins the game, it can gain reward by means of a product of the power it spends to help the source node and the price it charges for the power. Moreover, by reinforcement learning (RL), the relay node´s reward can be maximized gradually in an iterative way. Simulation results are presented to show that the proposed scheme can improve energy efficiency significantly compared to a centralized one which can maximize the source node´s transmission rate by allocating optimal power to the relay nodes.