Algorithmics Computational Game Theory Wireless Networks

Type: Progetto nazionale

The emerging global communication and service infrastructures need to be more and more pervasive, high-performing and reliable. The underlying scenario is basically characterized by decentralization, autonomy, and general lack of coordination among the heterogeneous network entities, the network in turn intrinsically being a common playground for a large number of users. These users exhibit various degrees of intentional or unintentional non cooperative behaviour, while competing for shared and often scarce resources. Besides, they increasingly demand also stable connection and seamless access to the network resources, by means of the enormous potential offered by the new wireless equipments and capabilities.

The combination of uncoordination and wireless access induces a degree of dynamism never experienced before, that must be necessarily faced by the emerging services and applications, and calls for a pressing solution of the resulting scientific and technological challenges. In such a highly elusive and mutable setting, the focus of the present project is that of evaluating the impact on the network performance induced by the combination of the lack of users cooperation/collaboration and the presence of users mobility/dynamism. To this respect, the general mismatch between the network optimization goals and the competing users private interests, motivates the following research directions:
1) modeling and analyzing the consequences of the autonomous users behaviour on the network performance;

2) accounting for specific features imposed by the dynamic nature of these networks (e.g., users mobility, wireless medium, unreliable connectivity, etc.);

3) investigating the influence of the different degrees of users social knowledge on users behaviour when analyzing items 1) and 2) above, and, consequently, on the system performance and on the induced mobility patterns and network topology;

4) evaluating the solutions developed in 1), 2), and 3) also through extensive simulations.

As a final outcome, the most significant algorithm/protocols and application scenarios will be packaged in a software tool (a "demonstrator") which will be made available to the research community.

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