Kybernetika 59 no. 4, 612-632, 2023

Distributed Nash equilibrium tracking via the alternating direction method of multipliers

Ji Ma, Zheng Yang and Ziqin ChenDOI: 10.14736/kyb-2023-4-0612

Abstract:

Nash equilibrium is recognized as an important solution concept in non-cooperative game theory due to its broad applicability to economics, social sciences, computer science, and engineering. In view of its importance, substantial progress has been made to seek a static Nash equilibrium using distributed methods. However, these approaches are inapplicable in dynamic environments because, in this setting, the Nash equilibrium constantly changes over time. In this paper, we propose a dynamic algorithm that can track the time-varying Nash equilibrium in a non-cooperative game. Our approach enables each player to update its action using an alternating direction method of multipliers while ensuring this estimated action of each player always converges to a neighborhood of the Nash equilibrium at each sampling instant. We prove that the final tracking error is linearly proportional to the sampling interval, which implies that the tracking error can be sufficiently close to zero when the sampling interval is small enough. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the correctness of our theoretical results.

Keywords:

game theory, alternating direction method of multipliers, time-varying Nash equilibrium tracking

Classification:

90C33, 68W15

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