Joint pricing and service selection for service-differentiated duopoly in cognitive radio networks

This study addresses the joint pricing and service selection problem between two primary operators (POs) and multiple secondary users (SUs). The SUs are divided into two priority classes in terms of their delay-sensitive demands. A M/G/1 queueing model of four queues is established, in which each PO serves two queues to support SUs' heterogeneous sensitivity to price and delay. A unique Wardrop equilibrium point of the proposed service selection strategy is developed, at which not only the overall cost perceived by SUs at two POs are equal; however, the cost perceived by SUs of the same PO in different class are equal. Moreover, the authors propose two pricing strategies for maximising the revenue of POs. The first one is that both POs set their prices simultaneously, the second one formulates the price competition as a two-stage Stackelberg game, and then the authors show the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium. The performance of the proposed mechanism is finally verified by numerical results.