SAFE: A Strategy-Proof Auction Mechanism for Multi-radio, Multi-channel Spectrum Allocation

Abstract

The rapid growth of wireless technology has led to increasing demand for spectrum. In the past, spectrum is statically allocated. As a result, many wireless applications cannot use idle spectrum even though it is left unused by the owner for a long period of time. The low utilization of already scarce spectrum resource requires us to dynamically reallocate the idle spectrum to achieve better spectrum usage. In this paper, we model the problem of spectrum reallocation as a sealed-bid reserve auction, and propose SAFE, which is a Strategy-proof Auction mechanism For multi-radio, multi-channel spEctrum allocation. We prove the strategy-proofness of SAFE theoretically, and evaluate its performance extensively. Evaluation results show that SAFE achieve good performance, in terms of spectrum utilization and buyer satisfaction ratio.

This work was supported in part by the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China (Grant No. 2012CB316201), in part by China NSF grant 61272443, 61133006, 61073152, and in part by Shanghai Science and Technology fund 12PJ1404900 and 12ZR1414900. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies or the government.