Throughput maximization with bargaining game in cognitive radio networks

Recently, a cooperative paradigm in cognitive radio networks, where licensed user can leverage its own bandwidth to unlicensed user in exchange for relaying its traffic, has been advocated to further improve all participates' performance. However, it entails that all participates interrupt their communication in each time slot. We propose BBC, a novel bargaining-based cooperation mechanism. It allows licensed and unlicensed users negotiate the duration of cooperation according to the amount of data that licensed user requires. Further, we formulate this negotiation process as a bargaining game, and a unique Nash equilibrium solution is achieved in analytical format. Simulation results show that BBC can increase throughput and reduce communication interruption times.