Hierarchical Game for Resource Sharing and Pricing in Multi-Tenant Networks

This paper investigates resource allocation and pricing for network slicing, which is a fundamental feature in next generation architecture, where network tenants or operators lease dynamically slice resources in order to provide satisfying service to their users. A hierarchical game based algorithm for resource allocation and pricing is proposed, where the players of the game are the network owner, the tenants and the mobile users. This game models the interaction between the network owner and the tenants and between tenants and mobile users and it aims to maximize the owner income, tenants' profits and provide the best quality of service for the mobile users. Simulation results proved the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and showed that dynamic allocation guarantees better utilities for all players compared to the fixed resource allocation. In addition, results showed that resource sharing between tenants improves their utilities without affecting the network owner income.