Dynamic pricing for resource allocation in wireless network virtualization: A Stackelberg game approach

The successful virtualization of wireless access networks is strongly affected by the way in which radio resources are managed. The infrastructure provider (InP) is required to deploy efficient and flexible resource allocation techniques to dynamically allocate the resources for the users associated with different mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). Service contracts with different MVNOs and fairness among their users are crucial to the success of the virtualization scheme deployed by the InP. In this paper, a game-theoretic framework is proposed for resource allocation in OFDMA virtualized wireless network. The framework considers a market model consisting an InP and multiple MVNOs. Regarding the virtual resource for a virtualized wireless network as commodities, the InP wants to maximize its revenue by leasing the infrastructure to the MVNOs while meeting certain contract agreements. Moreover, MVNOs want to serve their users at the best performance and want to pay the minimum to InP. A two-stage Stackelberg game is applied to optimize the strategies of both the InP (the leader) and MVNOs (the followers). We show that this two-stage game has a unique Stackelberg equilibrium.