Pricing in noncooperative interference channels for improved energy-efficiency

We consider noncooperative energy-efficient resource allocation in the interference channel. Energy-efficiency is achieved when each system pays a price proportional to its allocated transmit power. In noncooperative game-theoretic notation, the power allocation chosen by the systems corresponds to the Nash equilibrium. We study the existence and characterize the uniqueness of this equilibrium. Afterwards, pricing to achieve energy-efficiency is examined. We introduce an arbitrator who determines the prices that satisfy minimum QoS requirements and minimize total power consumption. This energy-efficient assignment problem is formulated and solved. Simulation results on energy-efficiency are then given where we compare our setting to the one without pricing. It is observed that pricing in this distributed setting achieves higher energy-efficiency in different interference regimes.