Nash Codes for Noisy Channels

作者：Hernandez Penelope^*; von Stengel Bernhard

来源：Operations Research, 2014, 62(6): 1221-1235.

DOI：10.1287/opre.2014.1311

This paper studies the stability of communication protocols that deal with transmission errors. We consider a coordination game between an informed sender and an uninformed receiver, who communicate over a noisy channel. The sender%26apos;s strategy, called a code, maps states of nature to signals. The receiver%26apos;s best response is to decode the received channel output as the state with highest expected receiver payoff. Given this decoding, an equilibrium or %26quot;Nash code%26quot; results if the sender encodes every state as prescribed. We show two theorems that give sufficient conditions for Nash codes. First, a receiver-optimal code defines a Nash code. A second, more surprising observation holds for communication over a binary channel, which is used independently a number of times, a basic model of information transmission: under a minimal %26quot;monotonicity%26quot; requirement for breaking ties when decoding, which holds generically, every code is a Nash code.

• 出版日期2014-12