Online Truthful Mechanism Design in Wireless Communication Networks

The recent upsurge of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has caused scarcity of network resources, such as spectrum and computation resources. Moreover, mobile devices ordinarily join or leave networks for their own convenience, resulting in high network dynamics. As a result, developing advanced technologies based on the concepts of cooperation, sharing, and reusing becomes necessary for wireless networks. As one of the promising solutions, online truthful mechanism design has been introduced in wireless networks in order to motivate the participation of more mobile users under a dynamic environment. This article first introduces the origination and some basic concepts of the online truthful mechanism, and then provides an exhibition of several online truthful mechanism design methods, which have been widely applied in wireless networks. We primarily present two types of online truthful mechanisms, that is, primal-dual based and time slotted online mechanisms, and then briefly summarize other classes, including Myerson-based, random-based, and matching-based ones.