Game theoretic approach for wireless virtualization with coverage and QoS constraints

Wireless network virtualization is an emerging paradigm to improve spectrum utilization by sharing wireless resources through slicing. In this paper, we investigate interactions between mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and users as a Stackelberg game. We leverage wireless virtualization while creating MVNOs that provide wireless coverage by subleasing the frequencies from owners of wireless infrastructures and announce it along with spectrum usage per-unit price to the users. Traditional wireless network providers or owners of the wireless infrastructure divide and reconfigure their RF bands to sublease to MVNOs based on service level agreements while keeping enough RF bands to their own users. Users maximize their rates by satisfying their imposed coverage, quality-of-service (QoS) and budget constraints. Performance of the users and MVNOs is evaluated using numerical results obtained from Monte Carlo simulations.