# Distributed Proximal Policy Optimization for Contention-Based Spectrum Access

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09420 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09420/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Oct 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Trust Region Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.05477/) (2015)
- [High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02438/) (2015)
- [Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02275/) (2017)
- [Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06676/) (2016)
- [Deep Recurrent Q-Learning for Partially Observable MDPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.06527/) (2015)
- [Resource Management in Wireless Networks via Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06215/) (2020)
- [A Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for Contention-Based Spectrum Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02736/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The increasing number of wireless devices operating in unlicensed spectrum motivates the development of intelligent adaptive approaches to spectrum access that go beyond traditional carrier sensing. We develop a novel distributed implementation of a policy gradient method known as Proximal Policy Optimization modelled on a two stage Markov decision process that enables such an intelligent approach, and still achieves decentralized contention-based medium access. In each time slot, a base station (BS) uses information from spectrum sensing and reception quality to autonomously decide whether or not to transmit on a given resource, with the goal of maximizing proportional fairness network-wide. Empirically, we find the proportional fairness reward accumulated by the policy gradient approach to be significantly higher than even a genie-aided adaptive energy detection threshold. This is further validated by the improved sum and maximum user throughputs achieved by our approach.