Spectrum trading in heterogeneous cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we investigate the optimal spectrum procurement and pricing from the perspective of a cognitive mobile virtual network operator (C-MVNO), which is a second market between the spectrum owner and the secondary users (SUs). The spectrum procurement consists of spectrum leasing and spectrum sensing, where the latter has uncertain outcome. The SUs are assumed to be heterogeneous in their valuations and demands of the spectrum, which is generally the case in reality. Hence, we use differentiated pricing among the heterogeneous SUs to improve the profit of the C-MVNO and allow the C-MVNO to perform necessary admission control. Modeling the spectrum procurement and trading procedure as a five-stage Stackelberg game, we analyze the optimal decisions for the C-MVNO by using backward induction and propose a computationally efficient method to find them. In simulations, a threshold structure of the solution is observed and our proposed scheme outperforms the single pricing based scheme in prior works.