Resource Allocation with Reverse Pricing for Communication Networks

TL;DR

This paper explores reverse pricing in communication networks, demonstrating it can enhance operator revenue, resource efficiency, and user payoff compared to traditional time-dependent pricing.

Contribution

It introduces a reverse pricing scheme for communication networks, showing its advantages over existing time-dependent pricing in handling demand uncertainty.

Findings

Increased operator revenue with reverse pricing

Higher resource utilization efficiency

Greater user payoff compared to traditional pricing

Abstract

Reverse pricing has been recognized as an effective tool to handle demand uncertainty in the travel industry (e.g., airlines and hotels). To investigate its viability for communication networks, we study the practical limitations of (operator-driven) time-dependent pricing that has been recently introduced, taking into account demand uncertainty. Compared to (operator-driven) time-dependent pricing, we show that the proposed pricing scheme can achieve "triple-win" solutions: an increase in the total average revenue of the operator; higher average resource utilization efficiency; and an increment in the total average payoff of the users. Our findings provide a new outlook on resource allocation, and design guidelines for adopting the reverse pricing scheme.