Revenue-Optimal Auction For Resource Allocation in Wireless Virtualization: A Deep Learning Approach

Wireless virtualization has become a key concept in future cellular networks which can provide multiple virtualized wireless networks for different mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) over the same physical infrastructure. Resource allocation is a main challenging issue in wireless virtualization for which auction approaches have been widely used. However, for most existing auction-based allocation schemes, the objective is to maximize the social welfare (i.e., the sum of all valuations of winning bidders) due to its simplicity. While in reality, MVNOs are more interested in maximizing their own revenues (i.e., received payments from auction winners). However, the revenue-optimal auction problem is much more complex since the payment price is unknown before calculation. In this paper, we aim to design a revenue-optimal auction mechanism for resource allocation in wireless virtualization. Considering the complexity, deep learning techniques are applied. Specifically, we construct a multi-layer feed-forward neural network based on the analysis of optimal auction design. The neural network adopts users’ bids as the input and the allocation rule and conditional payment rule for the users as the output. The proposed auction mechanism possesses several desirable properties, e.g., individual rationality, incentive compatibility and budget constraint. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Comparing with second-price auction and optimization-based schemes, the proposed scheme can increase the revenue by 10 and 30 percent on average, for single MVNO and multi-MVNO cases, respectively.