A Hierarchical Game Model for OFDM Integrated Radar and Communication Systems

Abstract

This paper studies the spectrum allocation problem between spectrum service providers (SSPs) and terminals equipped with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) integrated radar and communication (IRC) systems. In particular, IRC-equipped terminals such as autonomous vehicles need to buy spectrum for their radar functions, e.g., sensing and detecting distant vehicles, and communication functions, e.g., transmitting sensing data to road-side units. The terminals determine their spectrum demands from the SSPs subject to their IRC performance requirements, while the SSPs compete with each other on the service prices to attract terminals. Taking into account the complicated interactions, a hierarchical Stackelberg game is proposed to reconcile the spectrum demand and service price, where the SSPs are the leaders and the terminals are the followers. Due to the spectrum constraints of the SSPs, we model the lower-layer subgame among the terminals as a generalized Nash equilibrium problem. An iterative searching algorithm is then developed that guarantees the convergence to the Stackelberg equilibrium. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme in terms of social welfare compared to baseline schemes.