Game-Theoretic Pricing for Video Streaming in Mobile Networks

Mobile phones are among the most popular consumer devices, and the recent developments of 3G networks and smart phones enable users to watch video programs by subscribing data plans from service providers. Due to the ubiquity of mobile phones and phone-to-phone communication technologies, data-plan subscribers can redistribute the video content to nonsubscribers. Such a redistribution mechanism is a potential competitor for the mobile service provider and is very difficult to trace given users' high mobility. The service provider has to set a reasonable price for the data plan to prevent such unauthorized redistribution behavior to protect or maximize his/her own profit. In this paper, we analyze the optimal price setting for the service provider by investigating the equilibrium between the subscribers and the secondary buyers in the content-redistribution network. We model the behavior between the subscribers and the secondary buyers as a noncooperative game and find the optimal price and quantity for both groups of users. Based on the behavior of users in the redistribution network, we investigate the evolutionarily stable ratio of mobile users who decide to subscribe to the data plan. Such an analysis can help the service provider preserve his/her profit under the threat of the redistribution networks and can improve the quality of service for end users.

[1]  K.J.R. Liu,et al.  Behavior modeling and forensics for multimedia social networks , 2009, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[2]  Richard E. Blahut,et al.  Computation of channel capacity and rate-distortion functions , 1972, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[3]  Subir Biswas,et al.  Minimizing content provisioning cost in heterogeneous Social Wireless Networks , 2011, 2011 Third International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS 2011).

[4]  Sunil Karforma,et al.  A prototype design for DRM based credit card transaction in E-commerce , 2008, UBIQ.

[5]  Rita Cucchiara,et al.  Video Streaming for Mobile Video Surveillance , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia.

[6]  Kenton O'Hara,et al.  Consuming video on mobile devices , 2007, CHI.

[7]  Hisashi Ibaraki,et al.  Mobile video communications techniques and services , 1995, Other Conferences.

[8]  Satu Jumisko-Pyykkö,et al.  Evaluation of subjective video quality of mobile devices , 2005, MULTIMEDIA '05.

[9]  A. Perkusich,et al.  Granola: A location and bandwidth aware protocol for Mobile Video on-Demand systems , 2008, 2008 16th International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks.

[10]  Markus Rupp,et al.  Video Quality Estimation for Mobile H.264/AVC Video Streaming , 2008, J. Commun..

[11]  K. J. Ray Liu,et al.  Pricing game and evolution dynamics for mobile video streaming , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).

[12]  Yao Wang,et al.  Video Processing and Communications , 2001 .

[13]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  A Course in Game Theory , 1995 .

[14]  Chi-Yin Chow,et al.  Cache signatures for peer-to-peer cooperative caching in mobile environments , 2004, 18th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, 2004. AINA 2004..

[15]  J. Cruz,et al.  On the Stackelberg strategy in nonzero-sum games , 1973 .

[16]  Aria Nosratinia,et al.  Cooperative communication in wireless networks , 2004, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[17]  Heonshik Shin,et al.  Design of a mobile video streaming system using adaptive spatial resolution control , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics.

[18]  Kenton O'Hara,et al.  "My iPod is my Pacifier": An Investigation on the Everyday Practices of Mobile Video Consumption , 2007, Eighth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications.

[19]  J M Smith,et al.  Evolution and the theory of games , 1976 .

[20]  Pravin Varaiya,et al.  Capacity of fading channels with channel side information , 1997, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[21]  Dipankar Raychaudhuri,et al.  Architecture and prototyping of an 802.11-based self-organizing hierarchical ad-hoc wireless network (SOHAN) , 2004, 2004 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8754).

[22]  M.E. Rusli,et al.  Attacks on mobile networks: An overview of new security challenge , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Electronic Design.

[23]  Michael Gastpar,et al.  Cooperative strategies and capacity theorems for relay networks , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[24]  Yannis Manolopoulos,et al.  Cooperative Caching in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks , 2007, MobiMedia '07.

[25]  Ishfaq Ahmad,et al.  On using game theory to optimize the rate control in video coding , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.

[26]  Martin Mauve,et al.  A survey on position-based routing in mobile ad hoc networks , 2001, IEEE Netw..

[27]  Kin K. Leung,et al.  Cooperative wireless networks: from radio to network protocol designs , 2013, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[28]  Ghassane Aniba,et al.  A General Traffic and Queueing Delay Model for 3G Wireless Packet Networks , 2004, ICT.

[29]  Bernd Girod,et al.  Feedback-based error control for mobile video transmission , 1999, Proc. IEEE.

[30]  K. J. Ray Liu,et al.  Optimal Pricing for Mobile Video Streaming Using Behavior Analysis , 2010, 2010 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference GLOBECOM 2010.

[31]  Thomas Wiegand,et al.  Mobile Video Transmission Using Scalable Video Coding , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.