Strategyproof Wireless Spectrum Auctions with Interference

Wireless spectrum is a regulated resource, whose control and usage is regulated by government agencies. The allocation of spectrum to interested parties is usually conducted through auctions, and are an important source of income for these regulatory agencies. However, previous spectrum auction design fail to take into consideration the effect of interference, which can adversely affect the truthfulness of an auction. In this paper, we explicitly consider interference effects, and design truthful auctions for maximizing social welfare. Since the spectrum allocation problem is NP-Hard, we first show how to compute an approximate spectrum allocation scheme that is within a constant factor of the optimal solution, under certain simplifying assumptions on the interference graph. We then proceed to make this scheme strategyproof by tailoring a payment scheme based on the idea of minimum bids. A naive method to compute such a payment scheme requires O(n) iterations of the spectrum allocation algorithm, where n is the number of bidders. We show how to reduce the complexity to O(1) iterations instead. We conclude by discussing possible directions for future research in this area.