Designing LSA spectrum auctions: mechanism properties and challenges

Licensed Shared Access (LSA) is a complementary solution allowing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to access to another incumbent's frequency spectrum after obtaining a proper license from the regulator. This license contains all conditions of sharing, which ensures a certain quality of service for MNOs. In this context, using auctions to allocate those LSA-type licenses is a natural approach toward an efficient use of spectrum. In this paper, we review the existing mechanisms taking into account radio interference, and propose new ones. We also investigate extensions of those mechanisms, when the management of interference among base stations is more subtle than partitioning base stations into groups, and when several base stations are controlled by a common entity. For those extended contexts, we show that we can maximize social welfare and preserve the truthfulness by properly applying Vickrey-Clarke-Grove auction scheme.