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International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory

SAGT 2017: Algorithmic Game Theory pp 240–251Cite as

A 3-Player Protocol Preventing Persistence in Strategic Contention with Limited Feedback

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10504))

Abstract

In this paper, we study contention resolution protocols from a game-theoretic perspective. In a recent work [8], we considered acknowledgment-based protocols, where a user gets feedback from the channel only when she attempts transmission. In this case she will learn whether her transmission was successful or not. One of the main results of [8] was that no acknowledgment-based protocol can be in equilibrium. In fact, it seems that many natural acknowledgment-based protocols fail to prevent users from unilaterally switching to persistent protocols that always transmit with probability 1. It is therefore natural to ask how powerful a protocol must be so that it can beat persistent deviators.

In this paper we consider age-based protocols, which can be described by a sequence of probabilities of transmitting in each time step. Those probabilities are given beforehand and do not change based on the transmission history. We present a 3-player age-based protocol that can prevent users from unilaterally deviating to a persistent protocol in order to decrease their expected transmission time. It is worth noting that the answer to this question does not follow from the results and proof ideas of [8]. Our protocol is non-trivial, in the sense that, when all players use it, finite expected transmission time is guaranteed. In fact, we show that this protocol is preferable to any deadline protocol in which, after some fixed time, attempt transmission with probability 1 in every subsequent step. An advantage of our protocol is that it is very simple to describe, and users only need a counter to keep track of time. Whether there exist n-player age-based protocols that do not use counters and can prevent persistence is left as an open problem for future research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Abusing notation slightly, we will also write \(C^{{\varvec{f}}}_i(\varvec{h}_0)\) for the unconditional expected latency of player i induced by \({\varvec{f}}\).

  2. 2.

    For an anonymous protocol f, we denote by \((f_{-i}, f'_i)\) the profile where agent \(j \ne i\) uses protocol f and agent i uses protocol \(f'_i\).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    George Christodoulou, Martin Gairing & Paul Spirakis

  2. Computer Engineering and Informatics Department, University of Patras, Patras, Greece

    Sotiris Nikoletseas, Christoforos Raptopoulos & Paul Spirakis

  3. Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus”, Patras, Greece

    Sotiris Nikoletseas, Christoforos Raptopoulos & Paul Spirakis

Authors
  1. George Christodoulou
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  2. Martin Gairing
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  3. Sotiris Nikoletseas
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  4. Christoforos Raptopoulos
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  5. Paul Spirakis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christoforos Raptopoulos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Vittorio Bilò

  2. University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy

    Michele Flammini

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Christodoulou, G., Gairing, M., Nikoletseas, S., Raptopoulos, C., Spirakis, P. (2017). A 3-Player Protocol Preventing Persistence in Strategic Contention with Limited Feedback. In: Bilò, V., Flammini, M. (eds) Algorithmic Game Theory. SAGT 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10504. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66700-3_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66700-3_19

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