On Designing Protocols for Noncooperative, Multiradio Channel Assignment in Multiple Collision Domains

Channel assignment is a crucial problem for wireless networks, especially for noncooperative wireless networks, in which nodes are selfish. While there have been a few studies of noncooperative, multiradio channel assignment, most existing studies are restricted to single collision domains only. In this paper, we study the design of incentive-compatible protocols for noncooperative, multiradio channel assignment in multiple collision domains. First, we show the necessity of designing incentive-compatible protocols for this problem. Specifically, we show that, if no incentive-compatible protocol is deployed, Nash Equilibria (NEs) may have undesired properties, such as Pareto suboptimality and low throughput. To prevent the system from converging to the NEs with undesired properties, we propose an incentive-compatible protocol for channel assignment in multiple collision domains. We rigorously show that our protocol guarantees that the system converges to NEs that are Pareto-optimal and have the maximum system-wide throughput. Our simulation results also verify that our protocols are effective in ensuring that the system converges to the desired NEs.