Collaborative Opportunistic Scheduling in Heterogeneous Networks: A Distributed Approach

We consider a collaborative opportunistic scheduling problem in a decentralized network with heterogeneous users. While most related researches focus on solutions for optimizing decentralized systems’ total performance, we proceed in another direction. Two problems are specifically investigated. (1) With heterogenous users having personal demands, is it possible to have it met by designing distributed opportunistic policies? (2) With a decentralized mechanism, how can we prevent selfish behaviors and enforce collaboration? In our research, we first introduce a multiuser network model along with a scheduling problem constrained by individual throughput requirement at each user’s side. An iterative algorithm is then proposed to characterize a solution for the scheduling problem, based on which collaborative opportunistic scheduling scheme is enabled. Properties of the algorithm, including convergence, will be discussed. Furthermore in order to keep the users staying with the collaboration state, an additional punishment strategy is designed. Therefore selfish deviation can be detected and disciplined so that collaboration is enforced. We demonstrate our main findings with both analysis and simulations.