Interference Channel Games

Randall Berry
Northwestern University

Monday, November 10, 2008 at 1:00PM

54-134 Engineering IV Building
Refreshments Served

Abstract: In wireless networks a key consideration is how to mitigate interference among multiple users in a given spectrum band. This is especially true in unlicensed or open bands, where users may be deployed without any centralized frequency planning or control. In this talk, we describe some game theoretic approaches for sharing a given spectrum band, modeled as an interference channel. We initially consider approaches where interference is treated as noise and discuss an approach where the users exchange "interference prices" to convey to neighboring transmitters the "cost" of interference. In certain cases, this algorithm can be related to a supermodular game, which is useful for characterizing its performance. Extensions to OFDM systems and MIMO systems will also be discussed. Next, we discuss an information theoretic approach, where all interference is not treated as noise. For this setting, we provide a game theoretic model and show that this game always has an equilibrium which is sum-rate optimal.

Parts of this talk are joint work with Michael Honig, Jianwei Huang, Changxin Shi, and David Tse.

Biography: Randall Berry received the B.S.degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1993 and the M.S. and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 and 2000 respectively. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University. During the summer of 2000 he was a postdoctoral associate in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. In 1998 he was on the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Advanced Networks Group. His primary research interests include wireless communication, data networks, and information theory. He is the recipient of a 2003 NSF CAREER award and the Best Teacher award for the 2001/2002 academic year from the ECE Department at Northwestern University.