Cooperative Communication with Asymmetric Channel State Information： A Contract Theoretic Modeling Approach

In relay-assisted cooperative com- munication, relay nodes help forwarding the information of a source node in case of link failure between the source and a destination. Although user cooperation improves the over- all efficiency of the network, it requires incen- tive to stimulate potential relay nodes to assist the source by forwarding its data to the desti- nation. Moreover, the potential relays are bet- ter informed than the source about their chan- nel conditions to destination, which results in asymmetric information between the source and the relays. In this paper, we study the problem of lack of forwarding incentive in cooperative communication when channel state information of relays is private informa- tion and not known by the source. To tackle this problem, we apply the principle of con- tract theory to a cooperative wireless system. Source first designs incentive compatible and individually rational contract, consisting of a set of power-credit pairs. Then it broadcasts contract items to nearby n