Spectrum Auction for Differential Secondary Wireless Service Provisioning With Time-Dependent Valuation Information

In this paper, we propose a spectrum auction mechanism for secondary spectrum access in cognitive radio networks. Different from existing works in the literature, the time-dependent buyer valuation information is employed in the proposed mechanism so that the primary spectrum owner (PO) can determine more favorable spectrum allocations and pricing functions in order to maximize the expected auction revenue. In addition, to exploit the temporal spectrum reusability, the proposed mechanism allows each secondary wireless user to declare its specific time preferences, including service starting time, delay tolerance, and service length. By further considering the heterogeneities in secondary wireless service provisioning, the proposed mechanism is able to support heterogeneous forms (continuous or disjointed spectrum usages) of secondary spectrum requests. Specifically, at the beginning of the auction frame, secondary wireless users report their different spectrum usage requests along with the bidding prices, while the PO decides a single-step spectrum allocation and calculates the payment for each winner based on not only the received bids but also the known time-dependent valuation information. Theoretical analyses and simulation results show that the proposed auction mechanism can satisfy all desired economic properties, and can improve the spectrum allocation efficiency and auction revenue compared with counterparts.