Optimal Pricing Effect on Equilibrium Behaviors of Delay-Sensitive Users in Cognitive Radio Networks

Date

10/17/2013

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

Abstract

This paper studies price-based spectrum access control in cognitive radio networks, which characterizes network operators' service provisions to delay-sensitive secondary users (SUs) via pricing strategies. Based on the two paradigms of shared-use and exclusive-use dynamic spectrum access (DSA), we examine three network scenarios corresponding to three types of secondary markets. In the first monopoly market with one operator using opportunistic shared-use DSA, we study the operator's pricing effect on the equilibrium behaviors of self-optimizing SUs in a queueing system. We provide a queueing delay analysis with the general distributions of the SU service time and PU traffic using the renewal theory. In terms of SUs, we show that there exists a unique Nash equilibrium in a non-cooperative game where SUs are players employing individual optimal strategies. We also provide a sufficient condition and iteraIntive algorithms for equilibrium convergence. In terms of operators, two pricing mechanisms are proposed with different goals: revenue maximization and social welfare maximization. In the second monopoly market, an operator exploiting exclusive-use DSA has many channels that will be allocated separately to each entering SU. We also analyze the pricing effect on the equilibrium behaviors of the SUs and the revenue-optimal and socially-optimal pricing strategies of the operator in this market. In the third duopoly market, we study a price competition between two operators employing shared-use and exclusive-use DSA, respectively, as a two-stage Stackelberg game. Using a backward induction method, we show that there exists a unique equilibrium for this game and investigate the equilibrium convergence.

Description

Keywords

Cognitive radio networks, dynamic spectrum access, network pricing, queueing analysis, Nash equilibrium, Stackelberg game

Citation

Copyright 2013 IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. This is a pre-print version of a published paper that is available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6635264. Recommended citation: Tran, Nguyen H., Choong Seon Hong, Zhu Han, and Sungwon Lee. "Optimal pricing effect on equilibrium behaviors of delay-sensitive users in cognitive radio networks." IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 31, no. 11 (2013): 2566-2579. doi: 10.1109/JSAC.2013.131134. This item has been deposited in accordance with the publisher copyright and licensing terms and with the author's permission.