Game theoretical cooperative resource allocation for broadcasting in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) network is proposed to solve the utilization of radio spectrum resource. Spectrum trading has been an interesting topic in CR networks. In this paper, we formulate the problem as a game between multiple primary users (PUs) and multiple secondary users (SUs). We model the dynamic behavior of SUs using the theory of evolutionary game and the competition among PUs using a non-cooperative game. An evolution algorithm is presented to achieve the evolutionary equilibrium for a SU. For a PU, an iterative algorithm for strategy adaption to achieve Nash equilibrium is presented. We also introduce the idea of giving discount to the SUs which can provide help for the PU in broadcasting information. The numerical results show that our proposed model can achieve the optimal equilibrium point and the payoffs of both PUs and SUs are higher than those in the ordinary pricing-based game. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.