Pricing Mechanism for Virtualized Heterogeneous Resources in Wireless Network Virtualization

Virtualized resource in the wireless network enables to share the physical resource efficiently to increase the resource utilization. In the wireless network virtualization, an infrastructure provider (InP) and mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) can design a pricing scheme for the network resource to maximize their revenue and network resource sharing. Previous works have been proposed pricing mechanisms for virtualized resource sharing and allocation as an optimal solution. However, previous works mainly focus on a single type of virtualized resource. Thus, in this paper, we propose a pricing mechanism for multiple types of virtualized resources that include communication and caching resources in the wireless network. To do this, we formulate an optimization problem by considering social welfare among the MVNOs and show that this problem is NP-hard. Therefore, to solve the formulated problem, we propose an auction-based solution approach. The auction allows placing multiple MVNOs together in the same competitive market of virtualized heterogeneous resources. In our auction approach, first, InP decides and announces the reservation price to the mobile virtual network operator which covers capital expenditures (CAPEX) and Operating Expenditure (OPEX). Second, depending on resource demand to satisfy users’ requests, mobile virtual network operators determine and submit the bidding value to InP. Finally, InP evaluates bidding values from MVNOs to select the winning MVNOs and decide the optimal price for virtualized heterogeneous resources. The performance of the proposed algorithm shows that our approach can guarantee social welfare maximization.