Profit maximization for secondary users in dynamic spectrum auction of cognitive radio networks

As a powerful economic theory, auction mechanism has been extensively studied in dynamic spectrum allocation for cognitive radio networks (CRNs) recently. Different from most of existing works that focused on the mechanism design from the spectrum owner's side, we study from a new perspective on profit maximization of the secondary users (SUs). Because the spectrum auction mechanism has already been designed by the spectrum owner, we derive SUs' optimal bid strategies, which maximize their profits. First, we relax the limitation of SU's value on spectrum band, which is formerly defined as the transmission rate on channel, and introduce the affiliated value considering the impacts from other SUs. Further, the optimal value determination function is derived, which maximizes SU's expected profit; second, we analyze the auctioneer cheating issue, which has great influence on SU's profit, and the Nash equilibrium strategies for both spectrum owner and SUs are derived. Moreover, the repeated auction game mechanism is proposed that resists the auctioneer cheating effectively. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.