Repeated Game Analysis of a CSMA/CA Network under a Backoff Attack

Abstract

We study a CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Medium Access with Collision Avoidance) wireless network where some stations deviate from the defined contention mechanism. By using Bianchi’s model, we study how this deviation impacts the network throughput and show that the fairness of the network is seriously affected, as the stations that deviate achieve a larger share of the resources than the rest of stations. Previously, we modeled this situation using a static game and now, we use repeated games, which, by means of the Folk theorem, allow all players to have better outcomes. We provide analytical solutions to this game for the two player case using subgame perfect and correlated equilibria concepts. We also propose a distributed algorithm based on communicating candidate equilibrium points for learning the equilibria of this game for an arbitrary number of players. We validate approach using numerical simulations, which allows comparing the solutions we propose and discussing the advantages of using each of the methods we propose.