Dynamic spectrum management by a single wireless service provider: A cooperative game theoretic approach

Abstract

We consider a scenario where a single service provider (SP) owns multiple access networks (ANs) of different (not necessarily competing) technologies. It employs an entity, called spectrum controller (SC), which manages the common pool of spectrum and is responsible for distributing the spectrum to individual ANs in a fair manner. Since the available spectrum is insufficient to satisfy the aggregate demand from all ANs exhaustively, SC has to resort to a dynamic spectrum allocation technique. We have modeled the problem as an n-player cooperative bankruptcy game and have solved the problem with the help of a solution concept, namely nucleolus. We have designed a suitable utility function for an AN with respect to its received spectrum. We have been identified possible objective of SC (i.e., SP) as maintaining equality of distribution. Finally, we have studied performance of nucleolus against max-min fairness algorithm with respect to the objective of SC. Nucleolus outperforms the max-min fairness as far as our chosen objective is concerned. © 2011 IEEE.