A two-stage game for allocating channels and radios to links in wireless backhaul networks

Radio interfaces and channels are two sorts of resources in a multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh network. Efficient allocation of radio resources to mesh nodes should be done under the constraints of reducing co-channel interference yet with increased network connectivity. However, these two constraints conflict in nature as far as allocating radios (i.e., transceivers) and channels to links is concerned. In consideration of physical-layer interference, this paper proposes two non-cooperative games that play in sequence for radio resource allocation. The first game assigns channels to radios while the second distributes the resulting radio-channel pairs to links. The proposed games are shown to always reach a Nash equilibrium regardless of initial configurations, and together guarantee network connectivity while minimizing co-channel interference of each individual radio. We have conducted simulations to analyze game behaviors and carried out performance comparisons. The results indicate that game convergence time depends on the behavior of the first game. The proposed approach leads to more operative links than counterpart schemes when only two radios are available at each node, but loses its advantage over centralized, greedy methods when more radios are available.