Abstract
Traditionally, the cellular spectrum is allocated to operators (OPs) through auctions, as ideal mechanisms to discover market prices and allocate scarce resources. Even though spectrum is indeed scarce in sub-6 GHz bands, it becomes abundant in millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands. Interestingly, in that context, it is base station (BS) density which is limiting, and thus a critical factor, due to the outage phenomena in urban environments. Facing BS scarcity is one of the main reasons to foster virtualization techniques aimed at improving utilization and lowering costs. We consider a scenario with an infrastructure provider (InP) owner of a number of BSs and a set of OPs with their users (UEs). We propose a three-phase framework to price network infrastructure slices (NISs) and allocate them to OPs and to efficiently associate UEs with those NISs. The framework stages are: 1) an initial association, 2) a distributed auction mechanism across the BSs to allocate resources to Ops, and 3) a re-association process where the OPs can optimize the NISs they are awarded. The auction incentivizes OPs to bid truthfully and the outcome yields both socially optimal NISs and Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) prices. For the re-association phase, we propose deterministic and stochastic exchange-matching algorithms and demonstrate their convergence to stable matching and stable-optimal matching, respectively.
Highlights
Due to spectrum scarcity below 6 GHz, millimeter-wave bands from 30 GHz up to 100 GHz have been proposed for fifth generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks [1], [2]
We demonstrate that the DETERMINISTIC EXCHANGE MATCHING (DEM) and Stochastic Exchange Matching (SEM) algorithms converge to stable matching and stableoptimal matching, respectively
First we demonstrate that infrastructure is far more critical than spectrum in initial mmWave urban scenarios
Summary
Due to spectrum scarcity below 6 GHz, millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands from 30 GHz up to 100 GHz have been proposed for fifth generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks [1], [2]. The interdependence between the association of UEs with BSs and the valuation of the different BSs by the OPs makes the problem intractable and implementation difficult in practice For this reason we propose a heuristic three-phase framework to price NISs and allocate them to OPs and to associate UEs with the NISs. First, we assume an initial path-loss-based association, a common assumption in mmWave research [2], [4], [23], [24], so that OPs can assess the performance of the BSs. The OPs will value infrastructure resources according to the quality-of-experience (QoE) they can provide to their UEs. Second, we assume a Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction mechanism.
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