Double Auction Offloading: Challenges and Opportunities for Energy Efficient Telecommunication Networks

ABSTRACT

The continuing traffic growth and the need for improved user experience and ubiquitous connectivity force the industry to extend the telecommunications network infrastructure by installing numerous Base Stations (BSs) and Small Cells (SCs), thus incurring significant additional capital and operational expenditures. As a result, energy and cost effective solutions for network management are sought. In this paper, we introduce the concept of traffic offloading and infrastructure sharing, where operators can either buy and sell capacity and roam their traffic among each other, or they can offload their traffic to third party operating SCs. These mechanisms enable full utilization of cell capacity when the traffic is high and savings on low traffic BSs and SCs, which can be switched off when the traffic is low. As there are multiple stakeholders in the same geographical area, different network architectures and their particular aspects (e.g., infrastructure and spectrum ownership, role in the market, responsibilities and demands) must be taken into consideration. We propose a double auction mechanism that reconciles the different interests and demands of the participants and we assess the performance of the resulting system in terms of energy for different traffic loads.

References

1. [1] Cisco, “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2017-2022”, Feb. 2019.
2. [2] X. Bao, Y. Lin, U. Lee, I. Rimac, and R. R. Choudhury, “Dataspotting: Exploiting naturally clustered mobile devices to offload cellular traffic”, in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, Apr. 2013, pp. 420-424.
3. [3] D. E. Meddour, T. Rasheed, and Y. Gourhant, “On the role of infrastructure sharing for mobile network operators in emerging markets”, Comput. Netw., vol. 55, no. 7, May 2011, pp. 1567-1591.
4. [4] B. Leng, P. Mansourifard, and B. Krishnamachari, “Microeconomic analysis of base-station sharing in green cellular networks”, in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, May 2014, pp. 1132-1140.
5. [5] A. Bousia, E. Kartsakli, A. Antonopoulos, L. Alonso, and C. Verikoukis, “Game-theoretic infrastructure sharing in multioperator cellular networks”, IEEE Trans. Veh. Commun., vol. 65, no. 5, Jun. 2015, pp. 3326-3341.
6. [6] L. Gao, G. Iossifidis, H. Jianwei, and L. Tassiulas, “Economics of mobile data offloading”, in Proc. IEEE Workshop INFOCOM, Apr. 2013, pp. 3303-3308.
7. [7] S. Dimatteo, P. Hui, B. Han, and V. O. K. Li, “Cellular traffic offloading through WiFi networks”, in Proc. IEEE MASS, Oct. 2011, pp. 3303-3308.
8. [8] W. Dong et al., “iDEAL: Incentivized dynamic cellular offloading via auctions”, in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, Apr. 2013, pp. 755-763.
9. [9] W.Dong, S.Rallapalli, R.Jana, L.Qiu, K.K.Ramakrishnan, L.Razoumov, Y.Zhang, and T.Won Cho, “iDEAL: Incentivized dynamic cellular offloading via auctions”, IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw., vol.22, no.4, Aug. 2014, pp.1271-1284.
10. [10] A. Bousia, E. Kartsakli, A. Antonopoulos, L. Alonso, and C.Verikoukis, “Multiobjective auction-based switching off scheme in heterogeneous networks: To bid or not to bid?”, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol, vol. 65, no. 1, Nov. 2016, pp. 9168-9180.
11. [11] S.Paris, F.Martignon, I.Filippini, and L.Chen, “A bandwidth trading marketplace for mobile data offloading,” in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, Apr. 2013, pp. 430-434.
12. [12] F. Sun, F. Hou, H. Zhou, B. Liu, J. Chen, and L. Gui, “Equilibriums in the Mobile Virtual Network Operator Oriented Data Offloading”, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol, DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2017.2749600.
13. [13] World Heritage Encyclopedia, “List of mobile network operators of Europe”.
14. [14] “Mobile telecommunications infrastructure provider IHS acquires Helios Towers Nigeria”, Jun. 2016. [Available at: https://techpoint.ng/2016/06/13/mobile-telecommunications-infrastructure-provider-ihs-acquires-htn/].
15. [15] M. A. Marsan and M. Meo, “Network sharing and its energy benefits: A study of European mobile network operators”, in IEEE GLOBECOM, 2013, pp. 2561-2567.

Index Terms

• Applied computing

• Computer systems organization

• Networks

  • Network services

    • Network management

  • Network types