Decentralized dynamic rate and channel selection over a shared spectrum

Abstract

We consider the problem of distributed dynamic rate and channel selection in a multi-user network, in which each user selects a wireless channel and a modulation and coding scheme (corresponds to a transmission rate) in order to maximize the network throughput. We assume that the users are cooperative, however, there is no coordination and communication among them, and the number of users in the system is unknown. We formulate this problem as a multi-player multi-armed bandit problem and propose a decentralized learning algorithm that performs almost optimal exploration of the transmission rates to learn fast. We prove that the regret of our learning algorithm with respect to the optimal allocation increases logarithmically over rounds with a leading term that is logarithmic in the number of transmission rates. Finally, we compare the performance of our learning algorithm with the state-of-the-art via simulations and show that it substantially improves the throughput and minimizes the number of collisions.