A truthful auction mechanism for channel allocation in multi-radio, multi-channel non-cooperative wireless networks

Abstract

Due to users' fast-growing demands, wireless spectrum is becoming a more and more scarce resource. However, the state of spectrum usage shows that while large chunks of spectrum are left idle at many places, many emerging wireless applications cannot get enough spectra to provide their services. In contrast to existing truthful mechanisms for channel redistribution, which achieve strategy-proofness at the price of lowered system performance, we propose SHIELD, which not only guarantees strategy-proofness in the process of channel redistribution, but also achieves high system performance. Our evaluation results show that SHIELD outperforms the existing mechanisms, in terms of spectrum utilization and user satisfaction ratio. Here, channel utilization represents the average number of radios allocated to channels, and buyer satisfaction ratio shows the percentage of buyers who get at least one channel in the auction.