P. Mertikopoulos, E. V. Belmega, A. L. Moustakas, and S. Lasaulce. In ValueTools '11: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools, 2011.
We analyze the distributed power allocation problem in parallel multiple access channels (MAC) by studying an associated non-cooperative game which admits an exact potential function. Even though games of this type have been the subject of considerable study in the literature, we find that the sufficient conditions which ensure uniqueness of Nash equilibrium points typically do not hold in this context. Nonetheless, we show that the parallel MAC game admits a unique equilibrium almost surely, thus establishing an important class of counterexamples where these sufficient conditions are not necessary. Furthermore, if the network’s users employ a distributed learning scheme based on the replicator dynamics, we show that they converge to equilibrium from almost any initial condition, even though users only have local information at their disposal.
[Best paper finalist at ValueTools 2011]