Equilibrium Price and Dynamic Virtual Resource Allocation for Wireless Network Virtualization

Economic and technical features are equally important to radio resource allocation in wireless network virtualization (WNV). Regarding virtual resource (VR) as commodity, this paper proposes an effective VR allocation scheme for WNV from the perspective of the market-equilibrium theory. First, physical meaning clear utility functions are defined to characterize the network benefits of user equipments (UEs), infrastructure providers (InPs) and virtual network operators (VNOs) in WNV. Then, the VR allocation problem between one InP and multiple VNOs is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. To reduce the algorithm complexity, the multiple-objective problem is first decoupled into two single-objective sub-problems. The supplier-layer sub-problem aims to maximize the benefit of the unique InP, while the customer-layer sub-problem aims to maximize the benefits of the multiple VNOs. Both of the separated sub-problems are solved by using standard convex optimization method, and are combined by searching for the equilibrium-price (EP) of the VR market. As a result, the Pareto optimal solution of the original multi-objective problem is found, at which no one (the InP or anyone of the VNOs) can increase its benefit by deviating the EP without hurting others’ benefits. The effectiveness of the proposed VR allocation scheme is testified through extensive experiments.