Enabling Spectrum Sharing in Secondary Market Auctions

Abstract

Wireless spectrum is a scare resource, but in practice much of it is under-used by current owners. To enable better use of this spectrum, we propose an auction approach to dynamically allocate the spectrum in a secondary market. Unlike previous auction approaches, we seek to take advantage of the ability to share spectrum among some bidders while respecting the needs of others for exclusive use. Thus, unlike unlicensed spectrum (e.g. Wi-Fi), which can be shared by any device, and exclusive-use licensed spectrum, where sharing is precluded, we enable efficient allocation by supporting sharing alongside quality-of-service protections. We present SATYA (Sanskrit for "truth"), a strategyproof and scalable spectrum auction algorithm whose primary contribution is in the allocation of a right to contend for spectrum to both sharers and exclusive-use bidders. Achieving strategyproofness in our setting requires appropriate handling of the externalities created by sharing. We demonstrate SATYA's ability to handle heterogeneous agent types involving different transmit powers and spectrum needs through extensive simulations.

Energy Efficient Spectrum Auction Process with Utility Functions

“…The probability is dependent on the bid submitted by a user and the number of available channels in the system as shown in Eq. (12).…”

“…In addition, spectrum auctions were introduced as a possible regulatory measure for user admittance in a wireless network, as a means of overcoming the perceived scarcity of the radio spectrum. In such a situation, an auction process allows users who can afford to pay the most to have access to the radio spectrum [11,12]. An auction process is important because the price paid for the spectrum has over the years been based on potential price rather than allowing competition to reflect the actual price for the radio spectrum.…”

Designing Two-Dimensional Spectrum Auctions for Mobile Secondary Users

“…Kash et al [22] propose a spectrum auction enabling the sharing of a channel within an SU's interference range. By introducing a binary variable into the valuation of each SU to indicate the willingness to share, this auction primitively models exclusive/non-exclusive access of a channel for static SUs of heterogeneous types, with different transmission power and spectrum needs.…”

Complexity of Allocation Problems in Spectrum Markets with Interference Complementarities

“…Our motive here is two-fold. First, such algorithms can be used to study the efficient allocation for a large number of assets and agents, and second, such algorithms might be useful in developing truthful mechanisms that approximate an efficient allocation [9], [10], [16]. Alternatively, the cases where the allocation problems are NP-hard may provide a reason to design spectrum markets in such a way that the problem sizes are not too large, so that despite the NP-hardness, the relevant problems can be solved exactly.…”