Spectrum Trading: An Abstracted Bibliography

This document contains a bibliographic list of major papers on spectrum trading and their abstracts. The aim of the list is to offer researchers entering this field a fast panorama of the current literature. The list is continually updated on the webpage \url{http://www.disp.uniroma2.it/users/naldi/Ricspt.html}. Omissions and papers suggested for inclusion may be pointed out to the authors through e-mail (\textit{[email protected]})

Multilevel Pricing Schemes in a Deregulated Wireless Network Market

Typically the cost of a product, a good or a service has many components. Those components come from different complex steps in the supply chain of the product from sourcing to distribution. This economic point of view also takes place in the determination of goods and services in wireless networks. Indeed, before transmitting customer data, a network operator has to lease some frequency range from a spectrum owner and also has to establish agreements with electricity suppliers. The goal of this paper is to compare two pricing schemes, namely a power-based and a flat rate, and give a possible explanation why flat rate pricing schemes are more common than power based pricing ones in a deregulated wireless market. We suggest a hierarchical game-theoretical model of a three level supply chain: the end users, the service provider and the spectrum owner. The end users intend to transmit data on a wireless network. The amount of traffic sent by the end users depends on the available frequency bandwidth as well as the price they have to pay for their transmission. A natural question arises for the service provider: how to design an efficient pricing scheme in order to maximize his profit. Moreover he has to take into account the lease charge he has to pay to the spectrum owner and how many frequency bandwidth to rent. The spectrum owner itself also looks for maximizing its profit and has to determine the lease price to the service provider. The equilibrium at each level of our supply chain model are established and several properties are investigated. In particular, in the case of a power-based pricing scheme, the service provider and the spectrum owner tend to share the gross provider profit. Whereas, considering the flat rate pricing scheme, if the end users are going to exploit the network intensively, then the tariffs of the suppliers (spectrum owner and service provider) explode.Comment: This is the last draft version of the paper. Revised version of the paper accepted by ValueTools 2013 can be found in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools (ValueTools '13), December 10-12, 2013, Turin, Ital

Incentive Mechanisms for Hierarchical Spectrum Markets

In this paper, we study spectrum allocation mechanisms in hierarchical multi-layer markets which are expected to proliferate in the near future based on the current spectrum policy reform proposals. We consider a setting where a state agency sells spectrum channels to Primary Operators (POs) who subsequently resell them to Secondary Operators (SOs) through auctions. We show that these hierarchical markets do not result in a socially efficient spectrum allocation which is aimed by the agency, due to lack of coordination among the entities in different layers and the inherently selfish revenue-maximizing strategy of POs. In order to reconcile these opposing objectives, we propose an incentive mechanism which aligns the strategy and the actions of the POs with the objective of the agency, and thus leads to system performance improvement in terms of social welfare. This pricing-based scheme constitutes a method for hierarchical market regulation. A basic component of the proposed incentive mechanism is a novel auction scheme which enables POs to allocate their spectrum by balancing their derived revenue and the welfare of the SOs.Comment: 9 page

Resource allocation in realistic wireless cognitive radios networks

Cognitive radio networks provide an effective solution for improving spectrum usage for wireless users. In particular, secondary users can now compete with each other to access idle, unused spectrum from licensed primary users in an opportunistic fashion. This is typically done by using cognitive radios to sense the presence of primary users and tuning to unused spectrum bands to boost efficiency. Expectedly, resource allocation is a very crucial concern in such settings, i.e., power and rate control, and various studies have looked at this problem area. However, the existing body of work has mostly considered the interactions between secondary users and has ignored the impact of primary user behaviors. Along these lines, this dissertation addresses this crucial concern and proposes a novel primary-secondary game-theoretic solution which rewards primary users for sharing their spectrum with secondary users. In particular, a key focus is on precisely modeling the performance of realistic channel models with fading. This is of key importance as simple additive white Gaussian noise channels are generally not very realistic and tend to yield overly optimistic results. Hence the proposed solution develops a realistic non-cooperative power control game to optimize transmit power in wireless cognitive radios networks running code division multiple access up-links. This model is then analyzed for fast and slow flat fading channels. Namely, the fading coefficients are modeled using Rayleigh and Rician distributions, and closed-form expressions are derived for the average utility functions. Furthermore, it is also shown that the strategy spaces of the users under realistic conditions must be modified to guarantee the existence of a unique Nash Equilibrium point. Finally, linear pricing is introduced into the average utility functions for both Rayleigh and Rician fast-flat fading channels, i.e., to further improve the proposed models and minimize transmission power for all users. Detailed simulations are then presented to verify the performance of the schemes under the proposed realistic channel models. The results are also compared to those with more basic additive white Gaussian noise channels