Online spectrum auction in cognitive radio networks with uncertain activities of primary users

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate an online spectrum auction problem in cognitive radio networks with uncertain activities of primary users (PUs). In our framework, a primary base station (PBS), acted as the spectrum auctioneer, leases its under-utilized channels to secondary users (SUs) who request and access spectrum on the fly. Different from most of existing works in online spectrum allocation, we focus on a more practical situation that the auctioneer (or the PBS) has no prior knowledge of PUs' activities so that its channel states are not static. In order to balance the auction profits from granted SUs' spectrum requests and the potential penalties caused by incomplete services to PUs, we introduce the idea of virtual spectrum sellers and formulate the problem as an online double spectrum auction. We then propose a novel online admission and pricing mechanism which also considers the reusability of wireless spectrum. Theoretical analyses are provided to prove that our auction algorithm satisfies all desired economic properties in terms of budget-balance, individual rationality and truthfulness. Simulation results show that our proposed auction algorithm can increase the utility of the PBS, enhance spectrum utilization and achieve better satisfaction for SUs compared to counterparts.