1,551 research outputs found
Wi-Fi Offload: Tragedy of the Commons or Land of Milk and Honey?
Fueled by its recent success in provisioning on-site wireless Internet
access, Wi-Fi is currently perceived as the best positioned technology for
pervasive mobile macro network offloading. However, the broad transitions of
multiple collocated operators towards this new paradigm may result in fierce
competition for the common unlicensed spectrum at hand. In this light, our
paper game-theoretically dissects market convergence scenarios by assessing the
competition between providers in terms of network performance, capacity
constraints, cost reductions, and revenue prospects. We will closely compare
the prospects and strategic positioning of fixed line operators offering Wi-Fi
services with respect to competing mobile network operators utilizing
unlicensed spectrum. Our results highlight important dependencies upon
inter-operator collaboration models, and more importantly, upon the ratio
between backhaul and Wi-Fi access bit-rates. Furthermore, our investigation of
medium- to long-term convergence scenarios indicates that a rethinking of
control measures targeting the large-scale monetization of unlicensed spectrum
may be required, as otherwise the used free bands may become subject to
tragedy-of-commons type of problems.Comment: Workshop on Spectrum Sharing Strategies for Wireless Broadband
Services, IEEE PIMRC'13, to appear 201
A National Broadband Plan for Our Future: A Customer-Centric Framework
Congress has recently charged the Federal Communications Commission to establish a National Broadband Plan. This paper argues that a customer-centric plan, which puts the customer in control of decision-making, will yield the best broadband result for the U.S. The Federal government must establish a market infrastructure that encourages competition, requires transparency of both network providers and application providers, and includes vigorous antitrust enforcement. Competition from wireless broadband is present now and will become far more prevalent shortly, on the basis of current and announced investment plans. Regulators must also make available far more licensed spectrum to ensure this competition is realized. Calls for regulation in the form of mandated unbundling and more unlicensed spectrum are regulatory cul-de-sacs with proven track records of failure. Calls for regulatory control of network provider practices (other than transparency), such as network neutrality, are misguided. Such decisions are best left to customers, who can very well decide for themselves which of the broadband providers offer terms that best suit the customer.Technology and Industry
Auction-Based Coopetition between LTE Unlicensed and Wi-Fi
Motivated by the recent efforts in extending LTE to the unlicensed spectrum,
we propose a novel spectrum sharing framework for the coopetition (i.e.,
cooperation and competition) between LTE and Wi-Fi in the unlicensed band.
Basically, the LTE network can choose to work in one of the two modes: in the
competition mode, it randomly accesses an unlicensed channel, and interferes
with the Wi-Fi access point using the same channel; in the cooperation mode, it
delivers traffic for the Wi-Fi users in exchange for the exclusive access of
the corresponding channel. Because the LTE network works in an
interference-free manner in the cooperation mode, it can achieve a much larger
data rate than that in the competition mode, which allows it to effectively
serve both its own users and the Wi-Fi users. We design a second-price reverse
auction mechanism, which enables the LTE provider and the Wi-Fi access point
owners (APOs) to effectively negotiate the operation mode. Specifically, the
LTE provider is the auctioneer (buyer), and the APOs are the bidders (sellers)
who compete to sell their channel access opportunities to the LTE provider. In
Stage I of the auction, the LTE provider announces a reserve rate. In Stage II
of the auction, the APOs submit their bids. We show that the auction involves
allocative externalities, i.e., the cooperation between the LTE provider and
one APO benefits other APOs who are not directly involved in this cooperation.
As a result, a particular APO's willingness to cooperate is affected by its
belief about other APOs' willingness to cooperate. This makes our analysis much
more challenging than that of the conventional second-price auction, where
bidding truthfully is a weakly dominant strategy. We show that the APOs have a
unique form of the equilibrium bidding strategies in Stage II, based on which
we analyze the LTE provider's optimal reserve rate in Stage I.Comment: 32 page
Innovation in the Wireless Ecosystem: A Customer-Centric Framework
The Federal Communications Commissionâs Notice of Inquiry in GN 09-157 Fostering Innovation and Investment in the Wireless Communications Market is a significant event at an opportune moment. Wireless communications has already radically changed the way not only Americans but people the world over communicate with each other and access and share information, and there appears no end in sight to this fundamental shift in communication markets. Although the wireless communications phenomenon is global, the US has played and will continue to play a major role in the shaping of this market. At the start of a new US Administration and important changes in the FCC, it is most appropriate that this proceeding be launched.
Offloading in Software Defined Network at Edge with Information Asymmetry: A Contract Theoretical Approach
The proliferation of highly capable mobile devices such as smartphones and
tablets has significantly increased the demand for wireless access. Software
defined network (SDN) at edge is viewed as one promising technology to simplify
the traffic offloading process for current wireless networks. In this paper, we
investigate the incentive problem in SDN-at-edge of how to motivate a third
party access points (APs) such as WiFi and smallcells to offload traffic for
the central base stations (BSs). The APs will only admit the traffic from the
BS under the precondition that their own traffic demand is satisfied. Under the
information asymmetry that the APs know more about own traffic demands, the BS
needs to distribute the payment in accordance with the APs' idle capacity to
maintain a compatible incentive. First, we apply a contract-theoretic approach
to model and analyze the service trading between the BS and APs. Furthermore,
other two incentive mechanisms: optimal discrimination contract and linear
pricing contract are introduced to serve as the comparisons of the anti adverse
selection contract. Finally, the simulation results show that the contract can
effectively incentivize APs' participation and offload the cellular network
traffic. Furthermore, the anti adverse selection contract achieves the optimal
outcome under the information asymmetry scenario.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure
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