Belief-Assisted Pricing for Dynamic Spectrum Allocation in Wireless Networks with Selfish Users

In order to fully utilize the scarce spectrum resources, with the development of cognitive radio technologies, dynamic spectrum allocation becomes a promising approach to increase the efficiency of spectrum usage. In this paper, we consider the spectrum allocation in wireless networks with multiple selfish legacy spectrum holders and unlicensed users as multi-stage dynamic games. A belief-assisted dynamic pricing approach is proposed to optimize overall spectrum efficiency while keeping the participating incentives of the users based on double auction rules. Moreover, considering the budget constraints of the unlicensed users, a dynamic programming approach is further developed to optimize the spectrum allocation over time. The simulation results show that our proposed scheme not only approaches optimal outcomes with low overhead compared to general continuous double auction mechanisms, but also fully exploits the time diversity of spectrum resources when budget constraints exist