Truthful Auctions for User Data Allowance Trading in Mobile Networks

User data allowance trading emerges as a promising practice in mobile data networks since it can help mobile networks to attract more users. However, to date, there is no study on user data allowance trading in mobile networks. In this paper, we develop a truthful framework that allows users to bid for data allowance. We focus on preventing price cheating, guaranteeing fairness, and minimizing trading maintenance cost in trading. We formulate the data trading process as a double auction problem and develop algorithms to solve the problem. In particular, we use a uniform price auction based on a competitive equilibrium to defend against price cheating and provide fair-ness. Meanwhile, we leverage linear programming to minimize trading maintenance cost. We conduct extensive simulations to demonstrate the performance of the proposed mechanism. The simulation results show that our trading mechanism is truthful and fair, while incurring a minimized maintenance cost.