The emergence and evolution of 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), has pushed researchers and industries to be looking at the technological transformation to move towards an environment, where multiple devices will be able to connect, share information, interpret, and deliver a seamless experience for users. Despite the fact that significant advances have been realized through the use of enhanced network architectures and technologies, large amounts of spectrum – being a scarce resource - are still required to deliver massive increases in capacity and achieve high throughput. Unless a paradigm shift occurs in the resource allocation decision making process the problem of spectral efficiency will still remain a barrier towards the realization of 5G’s full potential.
Traditionally, towards devising intelligent resource allocation approaches in such resource constrained environments, the Expected Utility Theory (EUT) has been adopted targeting at the maximization of the users’ benefits from allocating the available resources. Following the principles of EUT, each user aims at maximizing its personal utility in a selfish manner targeting at the highest possible performance. Moreover, to enable the users’ distributed intelligent decision making in a computationally efficient manner, while at the same time capturing the users’ competitive behavioral patterns, Game Theory has arisen as a theoretical and practical powerful tool. The solution of the corresponding resource orchestration problems is the Nash Equilibrium (NE) point, where the users maximize their own utility, while they cannot achieve a better outcome by unilaterally changing their own strategies given the strategies of the rest of the users.
However, is the NE point really the best solution that it can be achieved by the users, in communications and computing systems where users’ decision are interdependent? Even more, is the goal of maximizing each user’s utility a reasonable and meaningful goal within such resource constrained systems? Those are the fundamental questions that this thrust aims to address, while introducing a novel efficient resource control framework based on the theory of Satisfaction Games.
Best Paper Award in the 12th IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC '19) for the paper "Redesigning Resource Management in Wireless Networks based on Games in Satisfaction Form," (Sept. 2019).
The wikipedia page of the definition of "Satisfaction Equilibrium" mentions our proposed equilibrium points for the uplink power control problem.
Promponas, P., Apostolopoulos, P. A., Tsiropoulou, E. E., & Papavassiliou, S. (2019, September). Redesigning Resource Management in Wireless Networks based on Games in Satisfaction Form. In 2019 12th IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC) (pp. 24-31). IEEE.
Promponas, P., Pelekis, C., Tsiropoulou, E. E., & Papavassiliou, S. (2021, June). Games in Normal and Satisfaction Form for Efficient Transmission Power Allocation under Dual 5G Wireless Multiple Access Paradigm. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
Promponas, P., Tsiropoulou, E. E., & Papavassiliou, S. (2021, May). Rethinking Power Control in Wireless Networks: The Perspective of Satisfaction Equilibrium] IEEE Transactions on COntrol of NEtwork Systems (CONES).
Papavassiliou, S., Tsiropoulou, E. E., Promponas, P., & Vamvakas, P. (2020, October). A Paradigm Shift Toward Satisfaction, Realism and Efficiency in Wireless Networks Resource Sharing. IEEE Network.