Two-Tier Architecture for Spectrum Auction in SDN-Enabled Cloud Radio Access Network

The demand for mobile services is growing aberrantly, which provides both challenges and opportunities for wireless networks. Wireless network virtualization is suggested as a key progression path for enhancing the capacity and resource utilization in the forthcoming fifth-generation mobile networks. In this paper, a software-defined network (SDN) enabled cloud radio access network (C-RAN) framework is proposed for enabling spectrum auction with a two-tier architecture support. In Tier-I, several remote radio heads (RRHs) are introduced to act as the secondary service providers to provide services to its small cell users (SUEs) by exploiting the purchased underutilized or idle resources from the primary service provider in Tier-II. Specifically, in order to maintain quality-of-service requirements of the SUEs, the revenue maximization problem for the RRHs is formulated by considering the user association, band assignment, interference management, and budget allowance. In Tier-II, an SDN-enabled spectrum auction mechanism is proposed for maximizing the social welfare based on the SUEs’ service requirements of all participating RRHs from Tier-I. In this auction mechanism, the bipartite graph is utilized to determine the socially optimal winners and the price charging scheme is proposed inspired by the well-known Vickrey–Clarke–Groves auction method. Simulation results reveal the performance and the benefits of the proposed SDN-enabled spectrum auction mechanism under different scenarios.