Inter-operator dynamic capacity sharing for multi-tenant virtualized PON

As the capacity of the optical access networks increases, the case for sharing this capacity amongst multiple operators becomes stronger. In addition to the capital and operating expenditure savings that infrastructure sharing can provide for the operators, providing a higher degree of infrastructure customization will be a strong motivator for operators to participate in the sharing ecosystem. Thanks to the network virtualization technologies, the higher degree of control over the infrastructure can be a motivator for the new virtual operators to join. Given this control, each operator will make decisions for their share of the resources according to their policies. However, when it comes to the infrastructure provider to aggregate all these decisions, ensuring trust becomes vital. It is essential to study the incentives of all the operators and design a sharing mechanism that incentivizes truthfulness. In this paper, we propose such an auction mechanism to monetize the exchange of excess capacity between network operators to increase resource efficiency. The proposed market design is based on a sealed-bid VCG auction for homogeneous multi-item goods with a reserve price. Through market simulations, we show that our proposed market design can achieve all the fundamental economic properties of a market including, truthful value announcing, individual rationality and weak budget balance.