  Cooperation between rational users in wireless networks is studied using
coalitional game theory. Using the rate achieved by a user as its utility, it
is shown that the stable coalition structure, i.e., set of coalitions from
which users have no incentives to defect, depends on the manner in which the
rate gains are apportioned among the cooperating users. Specifically, the
stability of the grand coalition (GC), i.e., the coalition of all users, is
studied. Transmitter and receiver cooperation in an interference channel (IC)
are studied as illustrative cooperative models to determine the stable
coalitions for both flexible (transferable) and fixed (non-transferable)
apportioning schemes. It is shown that the stable sum-rate optimal coalition
when only receivers cooperate by jointly decoding (transferable) is the GC. The
stability of the GC depends on the detector when receivers cooperate using
linear multiuser detectors (non-transferable). Transmitter cooperation is
studied assuming that all receivers cooperate perfectly and that users outside
a coalition act as jammers. The stability of the GC is studied for both the
case of perfectly cooperating transmitters (transferrable) and under a partial
decode-and-forward strategy (non-transferable). In both cases, the stability is
shown to depend on the channel gains and the transmitter jamming strengths.
