Hierarchical Decision-Making With Information Asymmetry for Spectrum Sharing Systems

In this paper, observing the information asymmetry phenomenon among multiple secondary users (SUs) spectrum sharing, we analyze the hierarchical decision-making and the strategic interaction of information-poor and information-rich SUs. A Stackelberg capacity-maximization game is formulated with leaders and followers, and closed-form solutions are mathematically derived for the optimal Stackelberg equilibrium solution. Moreover, the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium solutions are investigated via the quasi-variational inequality method. Finally, the distributed algorithm with partial asymmetric information awareness is designed to reach the solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves improved individual and system performance with mild condition on the ratio of information-poor leaders and information-rich followers.