Proportional and double imitation rules for spectrum access in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we tackle the problem of opportunistic spectrum access in large-scale cognitive radio networks, where the unlicensed Secondary Users (SU) ac-cess the frequency channels partially occupied by the licensed Primary Users(PU). Each channel is characterized by an availability probability unknown tothe SUs. We apply population game theory to model the spectrum access prob-lem and develop distributed spectrum access policies based on imitation, a be-havior rule widely applied in human societies consisting of imitating successfulbehaviors. We develop two imitation-based spectrum access policies based onthe basic Proportional Imitation (PI) rule and the more advanced Double Imi-tation (DI) rule given that a SU can only imitate the other SUs operating on thesame channel. A systematic theoretical analysis is presented for both policies onthe induced imitation dynamics and the convergence properties of the proposedpolicies to the Nash Equilibrium. Simple and natural, the proposed imitation-based spectrum access policies can be implemented distributedly based on solelylocal interactions and thus is especially suited in decentralized adaptive learning IThis work is supported by the project TEROPP (technologies for TERminal in OPPor-tunistic radio applications) funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR).∗Corresponding authorEmail addresses: [email protected] (Stefano Iellamo),[email protected] (Lin Chen), [email protected] (MarceauCoupechoux) Preprint submitted to Computer NetworksMarch 7, 2013 environments as cognitive radio networks.