Regulations and Strategies in Subsidy-based Spectrum Sharing Markets

Static spectrum allocation and secondary spectrum sharing are unlikely to sufficiently meet the growing need for the radio spectrum due to continuous increase in the number of wireless devices. Hence, new approaches for spectrum sharing at primary level are needed to improve spectrum utilization. In particular, to provide higher spectrum utilization, a government can motivate providers to participate in primary level sharing by introducing subsidy-based spectrum sharing (SBSS) markets. However, this market may give rise to the adverse effect of freeriding. In this paper, the goal is to minimize freeriding in a dynamic spectrum sharing environment using a novel heuristic algorithm that allows a set of providers to effectively participate in an SBSS market. In particular, the provider strategies and regulation on fees set by the government that minimize freeriding are analyzed. Simulation results verify the sustainability of the SBSS market by providing suitable strategies to the providers. A comparison between a game equilibrium to the strategies obtained from proposed algorithm shows the optimality gap. Moreover, a comparative analysis of conventional non-sharing spectrum market to the regulated SBSS market is provided to demonstrate the improvement of a provider’s earning when its charging fee lies between a fair market fee and a regulated minimum fee.