A QoS-based auction protocol for coexisting WISPs

During the last years, several wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) install base stations (BSs) to public areas in order to offer Internet feed or voice services to their subscribers. These BSs use the licensed-exempt spectrum, and limited regulations apply during their deployment. Thus, WISPs offering services in overlapping geographical areas need interference-free, access resolution mechanisms to reserve and use the available wireless resources. Moreover, to offer guaranteed level of services to users, WISPs need to cooperate for resources scheduling. Furthermore, each WISP might consider diverse criteria to charge the services that it offers. In this paper, a distributed, channel auctioning protocol is proposed. This protocol, called QAPW (QoS-based auction protocol for WISPs), is materialized through the wireless links, and allows BSs of different providers to bid in order to reserve wireless resources for long period of time. Bidding is based on the expected data volumes or the QoS demands of their accommodated connections. QAPW enables dynamic auctions. During the auction phase the scarce spectrum becomes a subject of negotiation. Bidder BSs, expecting to serve high data volumes in the near future, submit offers to semi-permanently allocate additional channels. Auctioneers are those BS that accommodate low, or moderated, data traffic