NSF Award
2332010
Worldwide increase in spectrum usage has made efficient spectrum sharing an important economic topic. One way to share the spectrum is to allow secondary users (SUs) to dynamically utilize the spectrum that primary users (PUs) do not use at a particular time and location. It is vital to design spectrum management mechanisms to promote efficiency, fairness, and privacy while preventing collusion. Efficiency ensures that the spectrum users who value the spectrum the most end up with it. Competition preservation ensures that collusion among secondary spectrum buyers is prevented. In particular, collusive behaviors among SUs can result in a lower price awarded to the PU. In the long run, the PU will be less willing to share or sell the spectrum, resulting in this important resource not being fully utilized. Privacy establishes that a spectrum user’s private information regarding location or pricing is not revealed, which prevents malicious attacks to a broadband provider or consumer to avoid broadband outages or interference. Fairness establishes that similar spectrum users are treated similarly, thus creating trust in spectrum sharing. The research team employs methods from economics and computer science to develop novel spectrum sharing mechanisms that take account of all four properties. The three main objectives are (1) to construct mechanisms that preserve competition while maintaining efficiency, (2) to design privacy preservation schemes that ensure efficiency, and (3) to identify economic approaches and algorithms that meet all four properties. <br/><br/>Current spectrum sharing algorithms generally focus on either maintaining efficiency or privacy. The researchers consider both of these properties at the same time as well as competition preservation and fairness. The research enhances the knowledge of those studying auctions who are interested in privacy preservation, fairness, and coalition prevention as well as those interested in the implementation of such mechanisms. In particular, in Thrust 1, new auction mechanisms include location, in consideration of negotiation power and information availability, to increase spectral efficiency and prevent collusion. Furthermore, privacy preservation is a topic that has become popular recently although there are few privacy preservation mechanisms in the economic literature. Thrust 2 adds to the knowledge of how to achieve both higher spectral utilization and user location privacy in a game-theoretic framework. Novel algorithms for location obfuscation mechanisms and utility functions will be more suitable for spatial spectrum sharing with directional transmissions. Thrust 3 focuses on new economic approaches and algorithms will ensure joint competition preservation, efficiency, fairness, and privacy in spatial spectrum.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
