Abstract:

Traditional flowrate control schemes require the cooperation of traffic sources to achieve an optimal network performance. However , all of such schemes will lead inevitably to a congestion collapse in the presence of noncooperative end-users. In order to solve this problem , a flowrate control framework is proposed based on the noncooperative game theory. In this scheme , the idea of the Nash solution from noncooperative game theory is taken into account , and each user has to pay for the network and has to choose a willingness-to-pay to maximize his own net profit. Moreover , a pricing mechanism for network bandwidth is designed to drive the user flow to the social optimal solution. The results prove that the proposed flowrate control game admits a unique Nash equilibrium point ,at which the bandwidth allocation is efficient and fair.

Key words: game theory, Nash equilibrium, pncmg, metwork, flowrate control, bandwidth allocation