Jianwei Huang

This book examines the interaction between the technical and economic issues in database-assisted dynamic spectrum networks. It explains various business models for different network settings, analyzing the user behaviors and system equilibrium under each model. With the explosive growth of mobile devices and bandwidth-hungry applications, radio spectrum is becoming increasingly congested and scarce. Database-assisted dynamic spectrum sharing is a promising technology for solving the problem of spectrum scarcity and congestion by allowing unlicensed mobile devices to dynamically access the under-utilized licensed spectrum resources through the assistance of a database. Database-assisted spectrum sharing network architecture has received wide and enthusiastic support from spectrum regulators, standards bodies, and industrial organizations. This book serves as a resource for researchers in white space communications and networking, for regulators in the wireless industry, and for graduate students and senior undergraduate students taking a course on network economics.

This SpringerBrief offers two concrete design examples for traffic offloading. The first is an optimal resource allocation for small-cell based traffic offloading that aims at minimizing mobile users’ data cost. The second is an optimal resource allocation for device-to-device assisted traffic offloading that also minimizes the total energy consumption and cellular link usage (while providing an overview of the challenging issues). Both examples illustrate the importance of proper resource allocation to the success of traffic offloading, show the consequent performance advantages of executing optimal resource allocation, and present the methodologies to achieve the corresponding optimal offloading solution for traffic offloading in heterogeneous cellular networks. The authors also include an overview of heterogeneous cellular networks and explain different traffic offloading paradigms ranging from uplink traffic offloading through small cells to downlink traffic offloading via mobile device-to-device cooperation. This brief is an excellent resource for postgraduate students studying advanced-level topics in wireless communications and networking. Researchers, engineers and professionals working in related fields will also find this brief a valuable resource tool.

This SpringerBrief provides an overview of cognitive mobile virtual network operator’s (C-MVNO) decisions under investment flexibility, supply uncertainty, and market competition in cognitive radio networks. This is a new research area at the nexus of cognitive radio engineering and microeconomics. The authors focus on an operator’s joint spectrum investment and service pricing decisions. The readers will learn how to tradeoff the two flexible investment choices (dynamic spectrum leasing and spectrum sensing) under supply uncertainty. Furthermore, if there is more than one operator, we present analysis of the competition among operators in obtaining spectrum and pricing services to attract users. The brief is designed for professionals working with C-MVNOs. Succinct and practical, it will assist them in making optimal investments and pricing decisions. It will also be of interest to researchers.

This book is on mobile networks with the emphasis on mobile data services. Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) monetize the scarce wireless spectrum resource, generating revenue through the provision of mobile data services to their customers.

This brief presents research results on social cognitive radio networks, a transformational and innovative networking paradigm that promotes the nexus between social interactions and cognitive radio networks. Along with a review of the research literature, the text examines the key motivation and challenges of social cognitive radio network design. Three socially inspired distributed spectrum sharing mechanisms are introduced: adaptive channel recommendation mechanism, imitation-based social spectrum sharing mechanism, and evolutionarily stable spectrum access mechanism. The brief concludes with a discussion of future research directions which ascertains that exploiting social interactions for distributed spectrum sharing will advance the state-of-the-art of cognitive radio network design, spur a new line of thinking for future wireless networks, and enable novel wireless service and applications.

Today's wireless communications and networking practices are tightly coupled with economic considerations, to the extent that it is almost impossible to make a sound technology choice without understanding the corresponding economic implications. This book aims at providing a foundational introduction on how microeconomics, and pricing theory in particular, can help us to understand and build better wireless networks. The book can be used as lecture notes for a course in the field of network economics, or a reference book for wireless engineers and applied economists to understand how pricing mechanisms influence the fast growing modern wireless industry. This book first covers the basics of wireless communication technologies and microeconomics, before going in-depth about several pricing models and their wireless applications. The pricing models include social optimal pricing, monopoly pricing, price differentiation, oligopoly pricing, and network externalities, supported by introductory discussions of convex optimization and game theory. The wireless applications include wireless video streaming, service provider competitions, cellular usage-based pricing, network partial price differentiation, wireless spectrum leasing, distributed power control, and cellular technology upgrade. More information related to the book (including references, slides, and videos) can be found at ncel.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/content/wireless-network-pricing.