Cooperative Wi-Fi Deployment: A One-to-Many Bargaining Framework

TL;DR

This paper develops a sequential bargaining framework for Wi-Fi deployment between a mobile network operator and venue owners, optimizing cooperation decisions and bargaining sequences to maximize the operator's payoff.

Contribution

It introduces a novel one-to-many bargaining model with an optimal sequencing algorithm, accounting for externalities and categorizing venue owners for efficient cooperation.

Findings

Optimal bargaining sequence improves MNO's payoff significantly.

The OVBS algorithm efficiently determines the best sequence.

Bargaining with categorized venue owners yields better cooperation outcomes.

Abstract

We study the cooperation of the mobile network operator (MNO) and the venue owners (VOs) on the public Wi-Fi deployment. We consider a one-to-many bargaining framework, where the MNO bargains with VOs sequentially to determine where to deploy Wi-Fi and how much to pay. Taking into account the negative externalities among different steps of bargaining, we analyze the following two cases: for the exogenous bargaining sequence case, we compute the optimal bargaining solution on the cooperation decisions and payments under a predetermined bargaining sequence; for the endogenous bargaining sequence case, the MNO decides the bargaining sequence to maximize its payoff. Through exploring the structural property of the optimal bargaining sequence, we design a low-complexity Optimal VO Bargaining Sequencing (OVBS) algorithm to search the optimal sequence. More specifically, we categorize the VOs into three types based on the impact of the Wi-Fi deployment at their venues, and show that it is optimal for the MNO to bargain with these three types of VOs sequentially. Numerical results show that compared with the random and worst bargaining sequences, the optimal bargaining sequence improves the MNO's payoff by up to 14.8% and 45.3%, respectively.