Game Theoretic Analysis of Distributed Spectrum Sharing with Database

According to FCC's ruling for white-space spectrum access, white-space devices are required to query a database to determine the spectrum availability. In this paper, we adopt a game theoretic approach for the database-assisted white-space access point (AP) network design. We first model the channel selection problem among the APs as a distributed AP channel selection game, and design a distributed AP channel selection algorithm that achieves a Nash equilibrium. We then propose a state-based game formulation for the distributed AP association problem of the secondary users by taking the cost of mobility into account. We show that the state-based distributed AP association game has the finite improvement property, and design a distributed AP association algorithm can converge to a state-based Nash equilibrium. Numerical results show that the algorithm is robust to the perturbation by secondary users' dynamical leaving and entering the system.