User-Centric View of Jamming Games in Cognitive Radio Networks

Jamming games between a cognitive radio enabled secondary user (SU) and a cognitive radio enabled jammer are considered, in which end-user decision making is modeled using prospect theory (PT). More specifically, the interactions between a user and a smart jammer regarding their respective choices of transmit power are formulated as a game under the assumption that the end-user decision making under uncertainty does not follow the traditional objective assumptions stipulated by expected utility theory, but rather follows the subjective deviations specified by PT. Two PT-based static jamming games are formulated to describe how subjective SU and jammer choose their transmit power to maximize their individual signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR)-based utilities under uncertainties regarding the opponent’s actions and channel states, respectively. The Nash equilibria of the games are presented under various channel models and transmission costs. Moreover, a PT-based dynamic jamming game is presented to investigate the long-term interactions between a subjective and a smart jammer according to a Markov decision process with uncertainty on the SU’s future actions and the channel variations. Simulation results show that the subjective view of an SU tends to exaggerate the jamming probabilities and decreases its transmission probability, thus reducing the average SINR. On the other hand, the subjectivity of a jammer tends to reduce its jamming probability, and thus increases the SU throughput.