Sequential bandwidth and power auctions for distributed spectrum sharing

Junjik Bae*, Eyal Beigman, Randall A. Berry, Michael L. Honig, Rakesh Vohra

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

83 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study a sequential auction for sharing a wireless resource (bandwidth or power) among competing transmitters. The resource is assumed to be managed by a spectrum broker (auctioneer), who collects bids and allocates discrete units of the resource via a sequential second-price auction. It is well known that a second price auction for a single indivisible good has an efficient dominant strategy equilibrium; this is no longer the case when multiple units of a homogeneous good are sold in repeated iterations. For two users with full information, we show that such an auction has a unique equilibrium allocation. The worst-case efficiency of this allocation is characterized under the following cases: (i) both bidders have a concave valuation for the spectrum resource, and (ii) one bidder has a concave valuation and the other bidder has a convex valuation (e.g., for the other user's power). Although the worst-case efficiency loss can be significant, numerical results are presented, which show that for randomly placed transmitter-receiver pairs with rate utility functions, the sequential second-price auction typically achieves the efficient allocation. For more than two users it is shown that this mechanism always has a pure strategy equilibrium, but in general there may be multiple equilibria. We give a constructive procedure for finding one equilibrium; numerical results show that when all users have concave valuations the efficiency loss decreases with an increase in the number of users.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number4604744
Pages (from-to)1193-1203
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
Volume26
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2008

Keywords

  • Auction
  • Dynamic spectrum sharing
  • Efficiency
  • Equilibrium
  • Mechanism design
  • Resource allocation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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