PhD Thesis Proposal

Competitive resource management:

A game-theoretic approach

Johan Hultell

April 17, 2008

Chapter 1

Introduction

We will study the management of resources in radio networks where the decisions
are delegated to the users. While the main benefits of this approach are lower
system complexity (since the intelligence are moved from the network to users),
increased redundancy and possibly less signaling, the major drawbacks are that
users have to base their decisions on partial/imperfect information and that
they may have incentives to act selfishly and ignore how their actions affect
the overall system performance. These concerns have induced research efforts
focusing on quantifying how severe performance degradation the selfishness of
users are likely to cause1 . Examples range from distributed power control,
multi-hopping, dynamic spectrum allocation, to how a packet channel should
be shared amongst a group of users with conflicting interests. In the first part
of the thesis we will add to this body of literature by studying:
• If distributed control of wireless resources where users maximize their per-
formance without considering how the decisions affect overall performance
can result in similar performance as “traditional” methods for sharing a
common resource.
The set of studies that can be related to this question will be presented in
Chapter 2 – Chapter 3 of the thesis. While the former chapter focuses on the
problem in the context of multiple access protocols Chapter 3 will evaluate the
potential loss in performance when selfish users are responsible for prioritizing
between a set of candidate access points.
The second part of the thesis; Chapter 4 – Chapter 6; targets a multi op-
erator scenario where users can roam freely between all providers and we will
refer to it as competitive network sharing. This mode of operation can
be beneficial for both network providers, who could reduce their investments
in infrastructure, and users due to the multiplicity of access alternatives (more
coverage, more services, lower price). Contrary to the situation for contempo-
rary mobile operators though, this type of open systems where users can roam
between the providers may result in competition between operators also in the
very short term perspective (per session, second,...). The overall aim in the
second part of the thesis is to determine:
1 These will be discussed in detail in Section 1.1.

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 • Whether competitive network sharing can be self-sustained and create
win/win situations where both users and providers benefit?
The remaining part of this document is outlined as follows: We start by re-
viewing the related work in the subject of interests. Thereafter we, in Section
1.2, describe the scope of the thesis along with the contributions and overall
research approach. Chapter 2 presents the preliminary conclusions of the re-
spective thesis chapters as well as a more detailed research approach for the
chapters of the thesis where additional work remains. Chapter 3 outlines the
remaining work and a tentative time plan. To keep this document concise
we have only included the related literature, contributions, and preliminary
conclusions of the thesis chapters. The results for each chapter can be
found in the papers and “draft version” of the thesis available at:
www.s3.kth.se/~johanh/PhDProposal/.

1.1 Related work

Before introducing the specific research problems and contributions of the thesis
we give an overview of the related work. The related work will be presented
separately for each chapter.

Selfish users sharing a common resource – Chapter 2

The problem of how a common resource (power, transmission time, codes, etc.)
should be shared amongst a group of selfish users has attracted considerable at-
tention during the last decade. In [1–4] focus is devoted to power controlled
systems and distributed uplink power control in CDMA systems is studied.
Users’ preferences are modeled as either the difference or ratio of a concave
function (that is increasing in SIR) and the transmit power used by the termi-
nals. The general conclusion from the studies is that without an appropriate
energy cost (this may either be incorporated in utility function as in [1] or intro-
duced as an exogenous cost as in [2, 3]) users’ selfishness can result in inefficient
resource allocations where users utilize too high transmission power.
Also systems where selfish users, using a fixed transmit power, share a packet
channel via contention based multiple access protocol has been treated in the
literature [6, 8–12]. In all papers, the system supports a single data rate and
user preferences are modeled by the difference between the throughput and a
packet transmission cost (in some studies this cost was zero). In general2 , the
problem is viewed as a static single shot game where users need to determine
whether or not they should attempt to transmit the packet in a certain slot.
All studies, further, assume that users know both the number of competing
users with packets to transmit and their utility functions. In the occurrence of
multiple simultaneous transmissions it is furthermore assumed that all packets
are lost. I.e. the potential effects of power capture is ignored. The
general conclusion from [6,8–12] is that users’ selfishness can result in significant
resource inefficiencies, especially if the packet transmission cost is small. For
sufficiently high transmission costs, however, the performance achieved by selfish
2 The only expection is [12], which models the problem as a Markov game with complete

information.

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users can be on par with the one offered by other distributed utility maximizing
protocols.

Load based access selection – Chapter 3

Without fractional assignment the problem of “optimally” assigning users to a
set of access points is known to be N P-hard even for systems with constant
interference [13]. This has resulted in the development of numerous heuristics
for prioritizing between access points. These range from purely path gain based
allocations rules to more complicated methods that also account for the “load”
(demand) at the candidate access points.
Several of the existing papers focusing on load-based user assignment have
studied it in the context of a multi-access, multi-carrier system. For these,
most attention has been devoted to load balancing between cosited subsystems,
which generally has been modeled as an M/M/c/c queue. An example is [15],
where the trunking efficiency gain from load balancing is evaluated for a single-
service, multi-carrier blocking system. This and similar studies have shown
that (i) load balancing between carriers can improve performance and that (ii)
data users, in general, should be assigned to the technology with highest cell
throughput in the case of heterogeneous systems (i.e. the gain from considering
load is marginal) [14].3 For the case where the candidate access points are
not cosited, however, it is not clear whether load balancing within a single
subsystem can increase “capacity”. This is because the reallocation of users to
other access points than the one associated with highest path gain results in
increased interference levels4 .
In [13] a method for obtaining a max-min bandwidth fair user assignment
in a network composed of noncosited access points was proposed. The method
relies on that fractional allocation is feasible and it is, further, based on that a
central network controller with complete system information is in charge for the
assignment. For noise limited systems, it was shown that a fractional max-min
bandwidth fair allocation is equivalent to a load balancing max-min access point
load assignment. It is moreover shown that the max-min allocation outperforms
assignment criteria that only accounts for the path gain5 . A similar study is
presented in [16] where a method for assigning users based on iterative water-
filling is proposed.
The problem of jointly finding a channel and user assignment that minimizes
the potential delay (average user latency) for downlink transmission is studied
in [17]. Although interference was taken into consideration (unlike [13, 16]), it
should be stressed that the authors assume that access points always have data
to transfer. Since the study is restricted to downlink, this results in that the
interference is independent of the user assignment. To find a proper channel
3 An example of such a policy would be: “WLAN if possible, otherwise HSPA if possible,

and otherwise GPRS”.

4 Given that a certain traffic volume needs to be transmitted a user who is allocated to

another access point the one associated with maximum path gain will consume more resources
(transmission time,transmit power, etc.) and therefore generate higher interference levels. In
uplink transmission the reallocated users will, in addition to consumer more resources, also
be closer to the “overloaded” access point.
5 We may note that studies that do not account for interference overestimate the gain from

considering load in the access point selection.

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and user assignment they use Gibbs sampling and as in the other references
load based assignment is shown to improve the performance.

Infrastructure sharing – Chapter 4

Infrastructure sharing has previously been proposed as a method to reduce the
capital and operational expenditures for mobile operators, especially in rural
areas where the capacity utilization is low [41–43]. Most of the existing work
has further focused on scenarios where the network sharing agreement is formed
before roll-out of a new technology, and the network deployed according to a
common network plan. Spectrum sharing between operators, technologies and
services have been identified as complementing method to improve the resource
efficiency [44,45]. The main disadvantage with infrastructure sharing is reduced
possibilities for differentiation, free rider network, maintaining the quality of
service for your own customers [42]. Yet another problem that has been identi-
fied are methods for determining how the revenues, costs, responsibilities, etc.
should be divided amongst the operators.

Competitive multi operator resource management – Chap-

ter 5
A number of studies regarding pricing in networking issues have been presented
in the last few years [18–30]. In the vast majority of these, fictitious prices
have been used for passing information from the network to users and thereby
facilitate distributed or network assisted resource management for an isolated
network provider (power control [18], access selection [19], dynamic spectrum
allocation [20], congestion control [21]). In these works the network adapts the
role of social welfare maximizer and used pricing as a “policing mechanism” to
increase resource efficiency.
The objective for most commercial network providers, however, is to max-
imize their individual long-term profitability and it is therefore unclear why a
provider, in reality, would adopt a role of social welfare maximizer. This ob-
servation has generated a body of literature that has extended the traditional
resource management problem to also include the coupling between resource
management policy and provider revenue [22–27]. Studies belonging to
this category focus on how a single network provider with a fixed subscriber base
can increase its revenue by means of dynamic pricing schemes that internalize
demand, quality of service and resource consumption. A common conclusion
reached in [22–27] is that price models that exploit user preference as well as
temporal and spatial variations can increase provider revenue substantially.
Recently, papers that consider the effects of pricing in environments popu-
lated by multiple (usually two), strategically interacting network providers have
started to appear [28–30]. In these users compete with each other for obtaining
resources (“bandwidth”) concurrently as network providers compete for attract-
ing traffic. Although the competition in reality occurs over multiple dimensions
(pricing, coverage, marketing, etc) focus in the aforementioned studies has been
devoted to contexts where the competition occurs by means of pricing, only.
A scenario where a group of competing internet service providers (ISPs) are
connected in tandem, and therefore offers complementary services, is treated
in [28]. The total amount of traffic transferred via a route is a function of its

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“end-to-end” price. Since different links in a route can be managed by different
providers, the ISPs are involved in strategic noncooperative game. For an iso-
lated route the authors show that noncooperative pricing where each ISP tries
to maximize its individual profit not only can result in “unfair” profit alloca-
tions but also discourage network upgrades since a provider’s revenue typically
increases if it manages the bottleneck link in a route.6 As an alternative a
revenue-sharing policy, based on the proportionally fair criterion, is proposed
and this is shown to increase profits for all involved providers. The effects of
competitive demand-responsive pricing in the contexts of dynamic spectrum al-
location is the topic studied in [29]. There spectrum is managed by a third party
broker wherefrom the providers can purchase bandwidth in a wholesale market.
Thus operators, in addition to competing for users the network providers also
competes for bandwidth. It is shown that competition between operators, in
general, transfers welfare from network providers to consumers as well as in-
creases the spectrum utilization. A similar study is presented in [30] wherein
a sealed-bid Knapsack auction for allocating shared spectrum amongst a set of
competing providers is proposed.

Noncooperative network deployment – Chapter 6

Dimensioning radio networks with respect to spatially varying traffic demand
has been addressed in a number of studies (see e.g. [32,33] and reference therein).
With a discrete number of potential site locations the problem of determining
the number and position of the access points can be formulated as a set cover-
ing problem. This belongs to the class of facility location problems [32], which
have been thoroughly studied within economics and operational research [34,36].
Since the problem is N P-hard several heuristics for finding approximative so-
lutions have been developed. As noted in [33] most of these rely on greedy
heuristics, probabilistic search methods such as simulated annealing, or combi-
nations thereof.7
In reality, multiple competing mobile operators coexist in a market. While
the competition as noted before in part occurs in business related dimensions,
aspects such as experienced service quality may be important and these are
dependent on the technology choices. Moreover the market share captured
by an operator will depend on both their own strategy and the strategy used
by its competitors. Thus the operators will be involved in a noncooperative
network deployment game where the deployment strategies of the operators are
interrelated.
Although deployment games have not been analyzed in the context of wire-
less networks, similar issues has been treated within the class of so-called com-
petitive facility location problems. These target situations where a com-
pany needs to determine at which locations that it should place new facili-
ties given a set of already existing facilities, competing for the same consumers
base [35,37,38]. Compared to the traditional facility location problem discussed
above, the largest difference is that competitive facility location problems also
6 The latter could, at least partially, be a consequence of the neglectence of the demand

correlation between different routes.

7 Typically probabilistic search methods dominate in studies where only a few facilities

(access points) are to be deployed while greedy heuristics are used when “several” facilities
should be deployed.

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require a model that describes how the market is divided between the competing
providers given a certain deployment of facilities. These range from determin-
istic, distance-based models where each facility serves its Voronoi region to sta-
tistical attraction models that support scenarios with heterogeneous facilities.
While the majority of studies have focused on scenarios where one company
enters an already existing market there are also studies where competitors take
turn in deploying new facilities; se e.g. [39, 40]. We highlight that even with
very simplistic models the problem of determining where to, optimally, place
new facilities (“access points”) becomes mathematically intractable.

1.2 Scope of thesis

In this section we outline the scope and contributions of the thesis. Each chapter
will be discussed separately.

Selfish users sharing a common channel – Chapter 2

During the last decade cognitive radio has emerged as a promising alternative
for improving the performance in wireless systems. Flexible and reprogramable
radios may however promote selfish behavior where users or agents acting as
proxies for the users adjust the set of adjustable parameters with the aim of
maximizing their own performance; without considering the effects on system
performance. In this chapter we are interested in determining:
• If multiple access protocols where the decisions are delegated to selfish
users can offer similar performance as the traditional protocols for sharing
a packet data channel?
As we have observed in the literature review this question has been analyzed in
e.g. [8,9,11]. For what concerns the work focusing on contention based protocols
for systems without power control, however, rudimentary radio models in which
collisions always results in packet losses have been used [8, 9, 11]. For systems
without power control and where a single data rate is supported packets may
be successfully received (captured) also in the presence of collisions if one of the
transmitting users is much closer than the interfering ones. In Paper 1 we
therefore study settings where strategic users, aware of that capture
prospects exists, share a common channel.
Typically, however, systems without power control support multiple data
rates so that users can adapt to their experienced channel condition. Yet exist-
ing studies focusing on selfish users sharing a packet channel that we are aware of
have exclusively targeted systems where a single data rate is supported. Hence
we, in Paper 2, analyze packet transmission games in systems where
multiple transmission rates are supported. The papers and their corre-
sponding contributions are listed below.
Paper 1 J. Hultell, Ö. Ileri, and J. Zander, “Selfish users in energy constrained
ALOHA systems with power capture”, submitted to WINET, 2008.
We extend the existing work by considering a scenario where capture can
occur if the SIR at the receiver exceeds some threshold. Further we study a
high mobility case where users only have statistical (“incomplete”) knowl-
edge of the competing users’ positions.

6
Paper 2 J. Hultell, “Selfish users sharing a multi-rate ALOHA channel”, to be
submitt to some IEEE conference, 2008.
The work presented in Paper 1 is extended to systems in which multiple
data rates are supported. Both a scenario with link adaptation and a
case with hybrid automatic retransmission requests (“incremental redun-
dancy”) are analyzed.

In second part of the chapter we study conflict free protocols in which users
with files to transfer participate in an auction at which the resources (“trans-
mission time”) is sold. Auctions have been frequently been proposed as a means
for letting users, with heterogeneous requirements, share a common resource.
Two papers have been written on the subject and, similar to Paper 1 and Pa-
per 2, the main question addressed is whether such protocols can offer similar
performance as the traditional ones.
Paper 3 M. Blomgren, and J. Hultell, “Decentralized market based radio re-
source management in multi network environments”, Proc. of Vehicular
Technology Conference (VTC-Spring), May, Dublin, 2007.
We develop a market based framework for price based radio resource man-
agement when users can be served by multiple access points. This frame-
work is used in both Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 of the thesis.

Paper 4 J. Hultell, “Market based resource allocation for delay elastic file
transfers”, conference to be decided, 2008.
Market based scheduling is compared with several centralized schedulers.
In particular we consider the effect of accounting for peak data rate, ser-
vice class, and file size when allocating resources to users.

Load based access selection – Chapter 3

Compared to mobile telephony, wireless data services will in general require con-
siderably higher data rates. Regardless of advances in transmission technology
this will result in systems dimensioned for fewer simultaneously active users per
cell. Due to reduced statistical multiplexing, the demand for resources (“load”)
may vary considerably between cells, which motivates the study of load based
access selection in wireless data systems. In this chapter we evaluate:

• If criteria for prioritizing between candidate cells that in addition to peak

rates also accounts for the current demand at the access points can increase
user data rates and/or system capacity? and
• If algorithms where users individually, and selfishly, select access point
can offer similar performance as centralized user assignment?

These questions have been treated in the following set of papers:

Paper 5 J. Hultell, and K. Johansson, “Performance Analysis of Non-Cosited
Evolved 2G and 3G Multi-Access Systems”, Proc. of PIMRC, September,
2006.
We evaluate the potential advantage of load-based selection between het-
erogeneous non-cosited subsystems with skew cell throughput. In partic-
ular we target the relation between increased trunking efficiency (due to

7
 larger resource pool) and improved path gain statistics due to lower carrier
frequency, higher macroscopic diversity order, smaller channel bandwidth,
etc. We show that when prioritizing between access points with
skew throughput data users should connect to the offering high-
est peak data rate.
Paper 6 M. Berg and J. Hultell, “On Selfish Distributed Access Selection Al-
gorithms in IEEE 802.11 Networks”, Proc. of Vehicular Technology Con-
ference (VTC-Fall), Montreol, September, 2006.
In this paper we study the potential gains of load based access selection
in noise limited WLAN networks by means of time-dynamical simula-
tion experiments. We show that load based access selection can improve
user data rates and system efficiency compared to methods that only ac-
count for path gain. Furthermore we show that algorithms according
to which users act selfishly offer comparable performance as the
centralized ones and that all (reasonable) centralized load-based
methods, in fact, offer similar performance.
Paper 7 M. Blomgren, J. Hultell, R. Cai, and T. Cai, “Distributed demand-
aware access selection in wireless multi-cell data networks”, Proc. of
PIMRC, Athens, September, 2007.
We study whether load based access point selection can improve capacity
and user data rates in “interference limited” cellular data networks.
As reference case, we use a single frequency system where the spectrum
is reused in all cells and users connect to the access point with maximum
path gain. We show that (i) the gains from load based access selec-
tion in combination with the introduction of a channel plan is
modest, and that (ii) the performance loss arising from that users
act selfishly and maximize their individual performance is small.

Paper 8 J. Hultell, “Access Selection in Multi-System Architectures”, Licen-

tiate thesis, ISSN 1653-6347, March, 2007.
Summary of Paper 5 and Paper 6, which also are complemented with
additional results.

Cooperative and competitive wireless access – Chapter 4

Previous two chapters focused on determining the efficiency of distributed re-
source management within a single wireless network. In this chapter we instead
examine the potential gains and disadvantages from infrastructure sharing. Fo-
cus is on roaming based sharing where users can roam freely and connect to
all access points. The aim of the chapter is to (i) show that there exist benefits
of sharing infrastructure, and (ii) identify a set of interesting research problems
associated with infrastructure sharing (a few of these problems will be analyzed
in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). The chapter will be based on:
Paper 9 J. Hultell, J. Zander and J. Markendahl, “Competition and Coopera-
tion in Wirelress Multi-Access Networks”, Chapter in: Cognitive wireless
networks, Springer, ISBN-978-1-4020-5978-0, 2007.
We examine how roaming based infrastructure sharing where users can
roam freely between providers can be performed and what consequences

8
 it has for users and providers. Both a case of pure competition and one
of pure cooperation are discussed as two extremes. Both scenarios are
shown to result in cost reductions and in the competitive scenario this
translates into price reductions (this will be further discussed in Chapter
5). Examples of emerging business models are identified and discussed.
Paper 10 J. Hultell, K. Johansson, and J. Markendahl, “Business models and
resource management for shared wireless networks”, Proc. of Vehicular
Technology Conference (VTC-Fall), Los Angeles, September, 2004.
Positioning paper that discusses research areas for resource management in
shared wireless networks. Specific requirements that are posed on resource
management in shared radio networks are highlighted.
It should be stressed that the these papers we will extend considerably. As a
considerable part of this chapter have not been published a draft version of the
chapter is available at the website.

Multi-operator price based access selection – Chapter 5

While Chapter 4 identifies and quantifies the overall benefits associated with
cooperative wireless access we, in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 study a few of the
research issues related roaming based infrastructure sharing where providers
compete for users also in the short time perspective in greater detail (we refer
to this as competitive infrastructure sharing). More specifically the aim in
chapter 5 is to evaluate:
• Whether competitive infrastructure sharing where users can roam freely
between network providers is feasible and how it will effect retail prices?
To the best of our knowledge the work presented in this chapter rep-
resents an early attempt of quantifying how individual interests and
the strategic interactions influence provider and user performance in
open systems. Paper 11 studies a context with dynamic pricing (settled via
an auction), where two providers compete by selecting a reservation price, and
where users always evaluate both providers. Paper 12 extends the study to sce-
narios where multiple (more than two) providers compete and where users can
dynamically adjust their candidate set. These content of the papers is briefly
described below:
Paper 11 M. Blomgren and J. Hultell, “Demand Responsive Pricing in Open
Wireless Access Markets”, Proc. of Vehicular Technology Conference
(VTC-Spring), Dublin, May, 2007.
The framework developed in Paper 3 is applied to a setting where users
compete for wireless resources concurrently as two providers compete for
users. Compared to a scenario where providers cooperate an open (com-
petitive) access market results in better services at lower price. In the pro-
longing this gives more satisfied customers and increased demand, which
act as a counterbalance to the reduced prices. In many cases the revenue
earned by the providers will be comparable to the one obtained through
cartel pricing and, generally speaking, the difference increase with the
concavity of demand.

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Paper 12 J. Hultell, M. Blomgren, and J. Zander, “Demand responsive usage
based pricing in wireless access markets”, to be submitted International
Journal on Mobile Network Design and Innovation, Spring, 2008.
We analyze how the individual interests and strategic interactions of users
and mobile operators affect retail price in an oligopolistic and competitive
access market. Focus in the paper is to determine how many providers
users should include and evaluate in their candidate set and what effects
this choice has for providers’ revenues and users’ monetary expenditures.
The study is performed for concave user demand and we show, by example,
that compared to the contemporary situation where users only can connect
to one operator, competitive infrastructure sharing can result in win win
situations where both the users and providers benefit.
Another peculiarity of open system is that the providers may have incentives to
provide users with “false” information in order to attract more customers; see
e.g. Paper 9 which discuss this issue. One example of how this could be realized
in wireless systems is a scenario where providers need to determine how to split
their power between a data and pilot channel (users base their selection of on
the received signal strength associated with the pilot channel). This is studied
in Paper 13.
Paper 13 J. Hultell, “Non cooperative power games in multi provider scenar-
ios”, internal report, 2008.
We study whether operators would have incentives to “advertise” false in-
formation in order to attract more customers in open systems. This work
is basically completed (90%) and the expected conclusion is that as long as
users revisit the same provider, incentives for providing false information
is modest.

Noncooperative wireless network deployment – Chapter 6

In this chapter we determine
• whether open systems will increase data rates or if the deployment inef-
ficiencies (caused by the individual interests) outweighs the benefits from
improved link budget?
This is remaining work and one paper is planned.
Paper 14 J. Hultell, “On the efficiency of noncooperative network deploy-
ment”, submit to some IEEE journal, summer/autumn, 2008.

1.3 Overall research methodology

Throughout the thesis we use a “case study methodology” where we, with re-
spect to our overall research topics, have identified a set of scenarios that offers
interesting research questions. While some of the scenarios are selfcontained
others are futuristic and may not be realizable with today’s technology and cur-
rent business models alone (this note is valid for the content present in Chapter
5 – Chapter 6 primarily).
For all the treated research questions, the individual interests and strate-
gic interactions between users and providers play an important role and to

10
study the related problems we have adopted a game theoretic mindset. Game
theory is a multidisciplinary branch that combines applied mathematics and mi-
croeconomics and it is suitable for distributed multi agent decision problems. In
the thesis we will often combine analytical treatment with computer based
simulation experiments.

11
Chapter 2

Preliminary conclusions and

planned contributions

In this chapter we present the preliminary conclusions of the chapters that are
based on already completed material. Focus is, however, devoted to the chapters
where remaining work exists. A more detailed description of the completed
contributions can be found at www.s3.kth.se/~johanh/PhDProposal/ where
the original papers and a draft version of the thesis are available.

2.1 Conclusions – Selfish users sharing a com-

mon channel (Chapter 2)
In this chapter we have analyzed whether multiple access protocols in which
strategic users control part of the transmission parameters (transmission prob-
ability, modulation, coding rate, etc.) can offer similar efficiency as traditional
protocols. Both contention based and conflict free protocols for sharing a chan-
nel was treated.
For contention based protocols we started by determining the “system effi-
ciency” in single rate systems where users control how frequently they should
attempt to transmit packets to the access points. Both a scenario where users
had complete knowledge about the path gain of the competing users and a case
where they only knew the number of competing users was treated. The prob-
lem was formulated as a static noncooperative game and the order independent
Nash equilibrium resulted in a distributed multiple access protocol where users
rely on transmission probabilities that increase with their path gain. For the
studied scenario we showed that selfish users, in general, are capable of utilizing
the system more efficiently than traditional path gain oblivious utility maxi-
mizing distributed protocols. Due to selfish user behavior the operating point
will, however, result in large performance variations where users close to the
cell border are starved. When only the number of competing users is known,
we showed that the users will use a binary strategy according to which they
try to monopolize the channel if their path gain exceeds some critical value
(which depends on the transmission cost and the number of competing users)
and otherwise shut their transmitter off.

12
 We furthermore studied the case where the access point supports multiple
data rates as well as retransmissions of unsuccessfully received packets. Com-
pared to single rate systems the efficiency gains by letting users select trans-
mission probability and rate (as compared to path gain oblivious protocols)
becomes even more pronounced. At low transmission costs, the efficiency in sys-
tems where only link adaptation is supported is higher than when also HARQ is
supported. This is an effect of that all users will have a positive expected payoff
when the transmission costs is low and HARQ is supported. In the prolonging
this increases interference levels and therefore lowers system efficiency. As the
transmission costs increases, though, the system efficiency with HARQ exceeds
the one associated with link adaptation. Both modes of operation, however,
offers considerably higher system efficiency than a distributed ALOHA protocol
where all users transmit with the same probability.
In the second part of the chapter we developed a framework for price based
rate selection in contexts where users with delay elastic files competed for wire-
less resources. The price was settled through a proportionally fair divisible
auction. The problem for users, whose preferences was modeled as weighted
sum of the file transfer delay and the associated monetary expenditure, was to
determine how much resources they should purchase. Our results show that
selfish users outperforms the common resource input and output fair protocols
and offer similar performance as preemptive priority based schedulers.

2.2 Conclusions – Load based access selection

(Chapter 3)
In this chapter we have, firstly, studied whether data rates can be improved
with load based criteria for ranking a set of candidate access points. Secondly,
we evaluated if these gains can be achieved when the decision is delegated to
terminals or if centralized user assignment is necessary.
Our results show that load based access selection can improve system ca-
pacity as long as the system does not reuse the entire bandwidth in all cells.
Largest gains are observed for systems that use a large reuse factor. For these,
load based criteria can increase the capacity (and data rates) considerably as
compared to methods that only base the ranking on path gain (“resource con-
sumption”). We furthermore showed that the performance achieved by users
who, selfishly, connect to the access point that maximizes their individual data
rate is similar to the one offered by centralized criteria. This suggests that the
benefits with centralized assignment is limited. As all load based criteria for
prioritizing between cells further offered similar performance our results indi-
cate that as long as the method accounts for the current demand at the access
points, the specific choice of algorithm is of secondary importance.
Finally we studied if a mobile operator with a fixed chunk of spectrum
that is reused in all cells and where users connected to the access points with
maximum path gain can benefit from introducing load based access selection
in combination with a channel plan. We show that the gains that arise from
introducing load based methods (in combination with channel plan) are modest
and for the studied scenario they did not exceed 20 percent.

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2.3 Cooperative and competitive wireless access
(Ch4) – Partly remaining work
The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the rationale, advantages and draw-
backs for sharing infrastructure and wireless resources. In addition to quan-
tifying how much operators are likely to gain by cooperating (e.g. sharing
infrastructure spectrum) the chapter will provide a discussion regarding the
characteristics of the supply and demand for wireless access. Moreover we pro-
pose an alternative method for implementing infrastructure sharing; wherefrom
both operators and users are likely to benefit. This will be further analyzed in
the following two chapters. In the following we will outline the major parts of
this chapter.

2.3.1 Demand and supply for wireless access

In the first part of the chapter we will analyze the demand for wireless access. In
particular we distinguish between personal communication services (“coverage
driven service”) and wireless data service (“capacity driven services”). Coverage
driven services (voice and messaging) is characterized by a so-called option
demand where the ability to communication generally exceeds the utility from
actual communication. As there furthermore exist significant network effects,
consumer offerings for these services have been, are, and will most likely continue
to be tightly coupled to coverage and support for mobility.
The value proposition for wireless data services, on the hand, is to convenient
access to information from all over the world. Clearly, the perceived perceived
user value depends on the compliance between the desired and obtained in-
formation. It is further noticeable that data services require that significantly
larger data volumes are transferred and that the perceived consumer value, typ-
ically, is independent on the transferred data volume. Finally we may notice
that a significant part of the data traffic will be generated by stationary indoor
users where fixed broadband connections are available and users does not seem
to be willing to pay a coverage premium (as for voice)1 . This means that the
wireless systems need to offer comparable performance at similar prices as the
fixed broadband substitute.
It is known; see e.g. [33], that there exist a linear relation between cost and
data rate provided with (almost) full coverage by a wireless network. Higher
data rates will thus, all else equal, require denser deployment with fewer active
users per cell as a result. From a supply point of view the problem of affordable
wireless access is quite clear. Each access point needs a sufficiently large number
of users if the operator should not need to claim “unreasonable” prices. In this
part of the chapter we will discuss the most commonly mentioned methods
for providing broadband wireless access. These are multi-access architectures,
access to additional spectrum, specific indoor solutions, and sharing of wireless
resources (infrastructure, spectrum,...). The discission will be complemented by
numerical examples; see e.g. Figure 2.1 where the user data rates is presented
as a function of the area throughput.
1 The key drivers for using wireless are instead the convenience of avoiding cables and the

easiness of always being able to use the same terminal.

14
 9 6
10th percentile user throughput 10th percentile user throughput
8 Average user throughput Average user throughput
5
7 10% indoor usage 10% indoor usage
50% indoor usage
Throughput [Mbps]

Throughput [Mbps]
6 50% indoor usage 4
90% indoor usage
5 90% indoor usage
3
4

3 2

2
1
1

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 5 10 15 20 25
2 2
Area throughput [Mbps/km ] Area throughput [Mbps/km ]

(a) Downlink transmission (b) Uplink transmission

Figure 2.1: Achievable data rate as a function of the area throughput and the
percentage of indoor users. In the example the intersite distance is 500 m and
a channel bandwidth of 5 MHz is available to the operators.

2.3.2 Cooperative (“shared”) wireless access

There are currently large structural changes in the market for access services.
One trend is a general consolidation process where fixed network operators
are acquiring or being merged with mobile operators. In addition to lowering
the overhead costs (e.g. customer management or marketing) this allows op-
erators to bundle fixed and wireless access services and thereby increase users’
switching cost, as well as reuse the fixed network connections for providing in-
door coverage. A market with a few global operators, moreover, strengthens
their positions towards telecom vendors. This, and the emergence of “low cost”
vendors have created consolidation there as well2 .
At the same time, the industry is turning its attention towards solutions
where operators outsource the management of networks to telecom vendors [46,
47] and/or share part of their infrastructure3 . Network sharing, which was
discussed already for the first and second generations of systems and will be
the focus here, can be implemented in several ways. These range from sharing
of passive elements to solutions where the entire access network is shared. As
we saw in the related works the main advantage with network sharing is cost
savings while reduced possibilities for service differentiation represent the most
pronounced disadvantage. In light of this a relevant question therefore becomes
when network sharing represents an interesting alternative for wireless data
services?
2 Two recent examples of mergers between telecom vendors are the one between Nokia

networks and Siemens as well as the one Lucent and Alcatel. These mergers are a combined
effect of that the consolidation amongst operators and that new low cost vendors, e.g. Huawei,
has entered the markets.
3 Current examples are Hutchison (Operator 3) and T-mobile in the UK which have agreed

to share mobile mast and access network for the 3G infrastructure. Another current example
is the radio access network (including mast, antennas, sites, power supply, transmission links,
3G base stations, and the radio network controllers) sharing agreements between Orange and
Vodafone. and mobile. During 2008, they have also announced plans for sharing network in
Romania and Spain.

15
Network sharing may be necessary for wireless data access
As we mentioned the value proposition of personal communication services is
strongly connected to the coverage. As these services only require modest data
rates (and therefore also investments) and consumer demand is well documented
the potential cost savings from shared infrastructure have not outweighed the
reduced differentiation possibilities.
With the introduction of wireless data services, though, wireless infrastruc-
ture may become an necessary complement to traditional expansion strategies.
This is because: (i) users willingness to pay is strongly dependent on the con-
tent and not only on converge (as for voice)4 , (ii) most usage will be generated
by stationary indoor users who will not be willing to pay a coverage and mobility
premium, and (iii) providing indoor broadband access with outdoor solutions
may not be economically viable and a wide uptake of specialized indoor solu-
tions may require substantial subsidization (which implies that operators need
to free up capital).

How much can be gained through cooperation?

From a technical perspective the immediate benefit from roaming based net-
work sharing is that users can connect to more access points. This will result
in that larger traffic volumes can be handled given a certain quality requirement
and it is an effect of improved path gain statistics, as well as the ability for dis-
tributing the load over access points that use nonoverlapping spectrum. As an
example, Figure 2.3 show the average and 10th percentile user throughput
as a function of the traffic demand when two mobile operators with identical
market share and access point density cooperate. It is evident that the gains
from cooperation are considerable. Consider, for example, the case where the
intersite distance is 500m and the operators want to offer a data rate of 2 Mbps
in downlink and 1 Mbps in uplink to their users. Then roaming based sharing
will almost double the supported traffic volume if the sites of the cooperating
providers are widely separated.
Figure 2.4 depicts the ratio between access point density required to meet
data rate requirement if the operators do not cooperate and the one required
if they cooperate (for the case where the access points is almost cosited). It
is clear that the even in the case where the access points are almost cosited,
cooperation can reduce the number of required access point with 20-60 percent
depending on users data rate requirement.

2.3.3 A competitive wireless access market

In previous subsection we have seen that cooperative wireless access can
lower the cost for providing wireless access. It is however uncertain
whether these efficiency gains would accrue to users or if the cooperating op-
erators simply would deploy a sparser network (or even dismantle part of their
existing sites) while keeping the price levels constant. It is further nontrivial to
determine how operators should share the resources, cost, and revenues, “fairly”
while retaining their potential competitive advantages.
4 In fact there seem to exist a belief in the industry that coverage will become a less

important differentiator; see e.g. [46, 47].

16
 1500 1500

1000 1000

500 500

0 0

−500 −500

−1000 −1000

−1500 −1500
−1500 −1000 −500 0 500 1000 1500 −1500 −1000 −500 0 500 1000 1500

(a) Almost cosited (b) Widely seperated

Figure 2.2: Illustration of the layout when the cooperating systems are almost
cosited and when they are widely separated.

11 6

10
Widely seperated Widely seperated
Almost cosited Almost cosited
9 5
No cooperation No cooperation
8
Throughput [Mbps]
Throughput [Mbps]

4
7

6
3
5

4
2
3

2 1
1

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Area throughput [Mbps/km2/operator] Area throughput [Mbps/km2/operator]

(a) Intersite distance 500m (DL) (b) Intersite distance 500m (UL)

Figure 2.3: Data rates as a function of the area throughput. Red curves corre-
sponds to a scenario where the access points of the cooperating operators are
“widely separated”. Blue curves represents a case where the access points is
“almost cosited”, and the black curves a case where there is no cooperation. In
the figures we assume that all users are outdoors, and that there is a standard
deviation of 8dB.

17
 Relative number of APs
1,6

1,4

1,2

10
4000
20 2000
30 1000
500
2
Offered traffic [Mbps/km /operator] Data rate requirement [kbps]

Figure 2.4: The access point ratio for a case where operators do not cooperate
and a case where they instead cooperate for different data rate requirements
and traffic volumes. In the specific example focus is on downlink transmission
and the access points of the two operators are “almost cosited”.

One alternative method for sharing wireless infrastructure would be to

establish an “access market” where users can connect to any operator and where
the operators compete for the users also on the very short time perspective (per
second, session,...). This model has been rare up until and only existed in a few
specific scenarios such as international roaming, public wireless LAN networks,
and for MVNOs who can choose between multiple operators when they purchase
wholesale capacity. It should be noted, though, that similar architectures have
been proposed and researched in e.g. [29–31]. In the remaining chapters of the
thesis we will study this type of open architecture and our overall aim is to
determine whether it can result in situations where both operators
and users benefit (as compared to the case where users subscribe to one
operator and where they are confined to using its infrastructure).

2.4 Conclusions – Price based access selection

in multi-provider environments (Chapter 5)
We consider a scenario where users are capable of roaming between network
providers. To attract users providers compete with each other and offer users
“good service at low prices”. The aim in the chapter is to analyze how the
individual interests and strategic interactions between network providers
affect user and provider performance. Two market regimes are analyzed. The
first, oligopolistic regime, represents a case where providers cooperate and use
a price so that their total revenue is maximized whereas they, instead, compete
by means of individual prices in the competitive pricing regime. While none of
the regimes is realistic in their extreme form we believe that the offer valuable
insights into retail pricing in competitive access markets.
Our results show that architectures where users can roam freely between

18
competing network providers may be economically sustainable. Typically users
obtain much cheaper service and experience higher average data rates. The gains
are a combined effect of increased competition and improved path gain statistics
since users have more access points to chose from. Although providers will earn
less revenue as compared to a oligopolistic pricing regime the difference is limited
(around 10 percent) when one also account for the user behavior. Compared to
the current situation where users only can connect to infrastructure managed
by the provider with whom they subscribe, however, provider revenue can even
be increased and a win/win situation where both providers and users benefit
are realizable. We have also showed that the difference between a oligopolistic
and competitive pricing regime reduce with concavity of user demand. This
corresponds to a scenario where the vast majority of the users have similar
price preferences.

2.5 Competitive network deployment (Chapter

6) – Remaining work
The data rates offered by a wireless network is closely related to its density of
access points and all else equal an increased density will improve the “service
quality”. In the prolonging a higher service quality is likely to increase usage
partly from its own subscribers but also because new users may start using
the services. As we saw in the related work, however, existing studies have
been limited to how a single operator should deploy its network given a fixed
consumer base and they have not accounted for that the market share that
a mobile operator is capable of attracting depends both on its own and its
competitors’ deployment strategies. In this chapter we study the efficiency of
network deployment in multi-operator environments where users are capable of
roaming between the operators.

2.5.1 Research question and contributions

The aim of the chapter is to determine whether systems where users freely can
roam between providers will increase data rates or whether the deployment
inefficiencies caused by the operators’ individual interests outweigh
the benefits from improved link budget? Particular attention will be
devoted to determining the effect of the
• Traffic heterogeneity (if traffic is centered around a few location strategic
providers may deploy all their access points at those locations)
• Availability of site locations, the number deployed access points, and the
existing access point density (if there are few potential sites operators may
need to share infrastructure in order to offer high data rates)
In addition to answering our research question the developed methodology rep-
resent the contributions of the chapter.

2.5.2 Research approach and models

We will focus on a scenario where multiple incumbent operators, whose network
consists of macro base stations deployed for rudimentary coverage purposes, are

19
present. All operators have an equal market share as well as the same amount
of spectrum. To increase data rates operators now want to complement their
network with micro base stations at some of the finite number of candidate site
locations. In the following we will outline the models used in the chapter.

Traffic demand model

The spatially distributed traffic demand will be described by a lognormal spa-
tially correlated random variable and in the simulation experiments the distri-
bution will be described by a set of demand nodes i placed over the service area.
This approach for modeling heterogeneous traffic demand has previously been
used in e.g. [32, 33]. Each demand node will be associated with a weight wi
that represents the maximum potential demand that operators can experience
at the different location. The “true” demand in demand node i di = wi f (si )
will be a function of the service quality experienced by the users. Notice that
the function f (s) ∈ [0, 1] is a sigmoid function that is monotonously increasing
and that it allow us quantitatively model that a higher service quality results in
larger demand. This phenomenon is usually referred to as “market expansion”
within economics.

Greedy base station deployment

We study a scenario where there exist j potential site locations for micro base
stations. These locations are generated in a semi random manner. Operators
take turn in deploying the micro base stations and once a site is occupied it
is removed from the set of available sites. To prioritize between the candidate
sites operators use a greedy heuristic according to which they choose the site
location that maximizes the traffic that they cover.
When determining the amount of traffic captured by an operator we, for
simplicity reasons, assume that each demand node is assigned to the base station
associated with highest peak data rate (on the control channel). Demand nodes
that cannot be supported are blocked.

Other models
We will assume that the macro and micro base stations have their antenna
placed 30 m and 10 m above street level. The height for houses are assumed
to be 25 m and with a street width of 15 m, building separation of 30 m and
mobile height of 1.5 m. This results in that the path gain values at 1 m are 35.2
and 22.2 dB, respectively, while the path gain exponents are 3.8 and 4.7 (these
values correspond the COST Walfisch-Ikegami model).
The peak data rate achieved for users experiencing a SIR equal to Γi is
modeled as
ri = min (W log2 (1 + βΓi ) , rmax ) , (2.1)
where β is an offset factor (“SIR gap”) that describes the difference between
information theoretic and practically implementable results and rmax the max-
imum supportable peak data rate.
To model the average throughput that users experience, we use a Processor
sharing formula according to which users at demand node i, associated with a

20
peak data rate ri and who are connected to a base station with load ρ, obtain
an average throughput of

log(1 − ρ)
si = −ri (1 − ρ) . (2.2)
ρ

Studied deployment scenarios

We are interested in determining how much additional traffic that can be sup-
ported if each operator complement their network with nmicro micro base sta-
tions. Three scenarios will be treated:
Traditional deployment: Each operator has an equal and fixed market share
which only can access the base stations of the specific provider.
Cooperative deployment: Operators cooperate and deploy their access points
as if they were one “big” operator and the users can connect to all providers.
Since users can connect to all base stations they will have better path gain
statistics than in the traditional case, which will result in higher traffic
demand.
Competitive deployment: Users can connect to all base stations. Operators
compete with each other and deploy their micro base stations at the site
locations where they maximize the traffic that they cover. As for the
cooperative case, users will obtain improved path gain statistics (since
they can connect to multiple base stations). Unlike the cooperative case
though, all operators may target the traffic hotspot.

2.5.3 Performance measures and examples of results

As performance measure we will use the maximum supported area throughput
of the competitive and cooperative deployment regime given that each operator
deploys nmicro micro base stations. We will denote these by Λcomp (nmicro ) and
Λcoop (nmicro ) respectively. For both cases we will use the traditional deploy-
ment Λtrad (nmicro ) as reference case. The simulation procedure is as follows:
1. Given a certain traffic heterogeneity and offered traffic Λinit [Mbps/operator/km2 ],
determine how many macro base stations that are required to support a
data rate of sinit . This density of macro base stations represent starting
point for the operators.
2. Determine the number of micro base stations, nmicro , that are required
to support a user throughput requirement s [kbps] under the traditional
deployment.
3. Now let the operators deploy nmicro micro base stations under the com-
petitive and cooperative deployment regime and determine the max-
imum offered traffic that can be supported given that the data rate s5 .
5 Notice that one can alternatively determine the maximum data rate given the offered

traffic Λinit or the number of micro base stations required to support the same area throughput
at the given data rate.

21
2.6 Preliminary conclusions (Ch6)
The main conclusions in the thesis will be:
• Letting users decide their transmission parameters can increase the system
efficiency even when users act selfishly and ignores how their actions affect
the other users in the system as compared to traditional path gain and
service oblivious protocols. This gain comes at the expense of increased
user performance variations.
• Also accounting for the current demand when prioritizing between a set of
candidate access points can increase user data rates and system capacity
if a channel plan is used. All methods for ranking the candidate cells
that account for load offer similar performance. Hence the potential loss
from delegating the responsibilities to terminals is small. Compared to the
option of reusing all spectrum in all cells, the capacity gains are modest.
• A scenario where users freely can roam between networks who compete by
means of prices (and service quality) can result in win-win situations where
operators earn more revenue concurrently as users obtain better service
at lower cost. Sharing the infrastructure results in resource efficiency
gains (improved path loss statistics, trunking efficiency, etc.) while the
competition between providers ensures that part of this efficiency gain is
transferred to users.

• + conclusions from noncooperative network deployment study.

22
Chapter 3

Outline of the remaining

work

This chapter outlines the work that remains in order to complete the thesis.

3.1 Thesis outline

A preliminary outline of the thesis is presented in table 3.1.

3.2 Time plan

A preliminary time plan is provided in table 3.2.

23
 Table 3.1: Preliminary thesis outline
Chapter Pages % completed
Introduction 25
Background 5 50
Related literature 10 90
Scope of thesis and contributions 5 75
Research methodology 5 75
Selfish users sharing a common channel 50 85
Energy reluctant users sharing packet channel 20 95
Energy reluctant users sharing multi-rate packet channel 15 95
Market based scheduling 15 85
Conclusions 1 95
Load based access selection for data traffic 20 95
Load based selection in traffic hotspots 10 95
Load based selection in cellular networks 10 95
Conclusions 1 95
Cooperative and competitive wireless... 25 80
Demand and supply for wireless access 10 80
Cooperative wireless access 10 80
Competitive wireless access 5 80
Discussion 1 80
Price based access selection... 35 80
Price based access selection 20 95
Time dynamic pricing and the effects of demand 10 95
Effects of false information 10 60
Conclusions 1 95
Noncooperative network deployment 25 20
Conclusions 5
Total 180

Table 3.2: Time plan

Activity Time budget Deadline
Thesis related activities:
Competitive network deployment 2.5 MM 2008/05
Finalize thesis 2 MM 2008/08
First draft to advisor 2008/06
Second draft to advisor 2008/07
Final draft to advisor and opponent 2008/09
Thesis to print 2008/09
Defense 2008/10
Miscellaneous:
Department duties 0.5 MM
PhD courses 1 MM
Total 6 MM

24
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