Game Theory a Novel Tool to Design Model Analyze and Optimize Cooperative Networks

Cooperative wireless network has drawn the attention of research community since past few years. It has shown potential to be the promising technology for next generation heterogeneous networks. For converting concept into reality, many challenges are to be complied like selection of cooperating partner, mechanism to ensure cooperation, identifying selfish nodes, performance optimization of not only a single node but network as a whole. These issues are very well considered and solved with the help of the Game theory. Game theory has been recently introduced in cooperative wireless network design as a powerful modeling and analyzing tool for competitive and completely distributed environments. It is a well-suited to describe mutual conflicting situations between multiple devices which attempt to communicate through a shared medium. In order to demonstrate suitability of a game-theoretic approach for optimization of cooperative wireless networks, we first present the main idea, concepts and components of game theory. Then we model typical cooperative communication situation as a game and throw light on the solution concept.