UAV Offloading: Spectrum Trading Contract Design for UAV Assisted 5G Networks

TL;DR

This paper designs an optimal spectrum trading contract for UAV-assisted 5G networks, enabling efficient downlink data offloading while considering the strategic interests of the macro base station and UAV operators.

Contribution

It formulates a contract-theoretic framework for spectrum trading between MBS and UAV operators, deriving optimal pricing and bandwidth allocation strategies.

Findings

The MBS sells less bandwidth when acting selfishly compared to social optimal scenarios.

A polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm computes optimal bandwidth allocation.

The contract design improves spectrum utilization and revenue for the MBS.

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been recognized as a promising way to assist future wireless communications due to its high flexibility of deployment and scheduling. In this paper, we focus on temporarily deployed UAVs that provide downlink data offloading in some regions under a macro base station (MBS). Since the manager of the MBS and the operators of the UAVs could be of different interest groups, we formulate the corresponding spectrum trading problem by means of contract theory, where the manager of the MBS has to design an optimal contract to maximize its own revenue. Such contract comprises a set of bandwidth options and corresponding prices, and each UAV operator only chooses the most profitable one from all the options in the whole contract. We analytically derive the optimal pricing strategy based on fixed bandwidth assignment, and then propose a dynamic programming algorithm to calculate the optimal bandwidth assignment in polynomial time. By simulations, we compare the outcome of the MBS optimal contract with that of a social optimal one, and find that a selfish MBS manager sells less bandwidth to the UAV operators.