Revenue Sharing Based Resource Allocation for Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks

Abstract

We propose a revenue sharing based resource allocation scheme for dynamic spectrum access (DSA) networks. In our scheme, based on a mutually agreed revenue sharing scheme, a primary network operator (PNO) actively shares its radio resource with a secondary network operator (SNO), which provides access service to secondary users (SUs) for its revenue maximization. To investigate the coupling effect between the revenue sharing and resource allocation, we formulate the interaction between PNO and SNO as a two-layered game, which includes a top layer game to model their revenue sharing and a bottom layer game to model their joint resource allocations. Specifically, in the top layer, based on their joint resource allocation decisions, the PNO and SNO form a Nash bargaining game to determine the revenue sharing scheme such that both of them can benefit from cooperation satisfactorily. Then, in the bottom layer, under the given revenue sharing scheme, the PNO and SNO form a Stackelberg game to determine their joint resource allocation decisions, which also influence their respective revenues. The two games work iteratively such that the PNO and SNO reach a final equilibrium state at which neither PNO nor SNO will change its decisions unilaterally in both layers. We propose efficient algorithms to solve both the top layer and bottom layer games and compute the final equilibrium of the two-layered game. Specifically, despite the non-convexity of joint resource allocation optimization problem in the bottom layer, we identify its hidden monotonic structure and propose an efficient algorithm, which is based on the polyblock approximation, to achieve the optimal solutions. Moreover, in the top layer, to tackle with the difficulty due to the lack of an analytical objective function for the revenue sharing problem, we explore its hidden unimodal property and propose a Brent's method based algorithm to achieve the optimal solution. Numerical results are presented to verify the performance of our algorithms and show that our revenue sharing based resource allocation scheme yields a win-win situation for the PNO and SNO.