  Game theoretical techniques have recently become prevalent in many
engineering applications, notably in communications. With the emergence of
cooperation as a new communication paradigm, and the need for self-organizing,
decentralized, and autonomic networks, it has become imperative to seek
suitable game theoretical tools that allow to analyze and study the behavior
and interactions of the nodes in future communication networks. In this
context, this tutorial introduces the concepts of cooperative game theory,
namely coalitional games, and their potential applications in communication and
wireless networks. For this purpose, we classify coalitional games into three
categories: Canonical coalitional games, coalition formation games, and
coalitional graph games. This new classification represents an
application-oriented approach for understanding and analyzing coalitional
games. For each class of coalitional games, we present the fundamental
components, introduce the key properties, mathematical techniques, and solution
concepts, and describe the methodologies for applying these games in several
applications drawn from the state-of-the-art research in communications. In a
nutshell, this article constitutes a unified treatment of coalitional game
theory tailored to the demands of communications and network engineers.
