Game Theory can be regarded as a multi-agent decision problem. Which means there are many people contending for limited rewards/payoffs. They have to make certain moves on which their payoff depends. These people have to follow certain rules while making these moves. Each player is supposed to behave rationally.

Rationality: In the language of Game Theory rationality implies that each player tries to maximize his/her payoff irrespective to what other players are doing. In essence each player has to decide a set of moves which are in accordance with the rules of the game and which maximize his/her rewards.

Game Theory can be classified in two branches

• Non co-operative game theory : In this case the players work independently without assuming anything about what other players are doing.
• Co-operative game theory: Here players may co-operate with one another.

Game Theory has found applications in Economic, Evolutionary Biology, Sociology, Political Science etc, now Its finding applications in Computer Science.

DSL and Game Theory

In DSL communications, Game Theory is used to understand the multi-user scenario where different users of a particular channel tries to maximize their link capacities. It is found that a distributed multi-user scenario is equivalent to a non co-operative game where the solution was found by iterative water filling algorithm (see DSM), where a Nash-equilibrium is reached.

On the other hand, consider a scenario, where some of the users are like partners in the game while others are not. This is exactly an example of co-operation in a partially non-cooperative game. This is also close to what I am working on, it is a generalization of so called Game theoretic approach to DSM (Dynamic Spectrum Management), where a solution is yet to be defined.

Game Theory Links

• Rich in games - Game Theory dot net
• yet2bdefined
• yet2bdefined