A Revenue Enhancing Stackelberg Game for Owners in Opportunistic Spectrum Access

A Stackelberg game between three players; spectrum owner, primary users and secondary users is presented under the opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) model, where the secondary users share the channel with primary users in time and secondary user access is performed through a non- perfect listen-before-send scheme. It is shown through simulations that the spectrum owner can enhance her revenue by allowing OSA with a non-zero interference probability to the primary users. The subscription fee of the primary users is lowered in exchange of the non-zero interference probability. The revenue enhancement results from the subscription fees of the secondary users and better utilization of the spectrum. It is also shown through simulations that the enhancement is available for a large range of user preferences such as the value of primary service relative to the secondary, and optimal action of the spectrum owner is robust against estimation errors in these preferences.