The Theory of Intervention Games for Resource Sharing in Wireless Communications

This paper develops a game-theoretic framework for the design and analysis of a new class of incentive schemes called intervention schemes. We formulate intervention games, propose a solution concept of intervention equilibrium, and prove its existence in a finite intervention game. We apply our framework to resource sharing scenarios in wireless communications, whose non-cooperative outcomes without intervention yield suboptimal performance. We derive analytical results and analyze illustrative examples in the cases of imperfect and perfect monitoring. In the case of imperfect monitoring, intervention schemes can improve the suboptimal performance of non-cooperative equilibrium when the intervention device has a sufficiently accurate monitoring technology, although it may not be possible to achieve the best feasible performance. In the case of perfect monitoring, the best feasible performance can be obtained with an intervention scheme when the intervention device has a sufficiently strong intervention capability.