Abstract:

In wireless random access networks,high-speed cooperative transmission can be implemented via the rate allocation that distributes the traffic flow to heterogeneous networks. However,both the collision probability and the average waiting time may increase with the number of competitive hosts. In order to solve this problem,a rate allocation algorithm based on the pricing function of cooperative access to the network is proposed,which
describes the access time cost with the pricing function based on the channel utilization and models the rate allocation according to the principle of achieving the maximum total network payoff with the minimum access cost. The abovementioned rate allocation problem is proved to be a convex optimization one and the explicit solution to the problem is obtained according to the Lagrange multiplier method. Simulated results show that the proposed algorithm helps to select the access networks and distribute the traffic to networks according to both the network status and the channel
efficiency,and that it makes a trade-off between the access delay and the fairness. Moreover,it avoids the access to heavy-load random access networks,thus increasing the access efficiency.

Key words: cooperative communication, random access, rate allocation, pricing function