Power Bargaining in Multi-Source Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider a multi-source single-relay wireless network, where the relay facilitates transmissions of the sources' signals to the destination. We study the relay power allocation among the sources, and use the bargaining theory to model the negotiation among the sources on fair allocation of the relay power. By assigning a bargaining power to each source to indicate its transmission priority, we propose an asymmetric Nash bargaining solution (NBS)-based relay power allocation scheme. The impact of the bargaining powers on the relay power allocation and network performance is analyzed. We show that the proposed scheme addresses the tradeoff between the sum-rate of the network and the fairness among the sources, and can be adapted to meet different requirements in different applications by proper selection of the bargaining powers.