TRADE: A truthful online combinatorial auction for spectrum allocation in cognitive radio networks

Auctions have been shown to be able to tackle the problem of spectrum scarcity effectively, but most of existing works only focus on static scenarios. They cannot deal with the requests of spectrum users as they arrive and leave dynamically. Bidders can either cheat by bidding untruthfully or cheat about the arrival and departure time. In this paper, we model the radio spectrum allocation problem as a sealed-bid online combinatorial auction and propose a truthful mechanism called TRADE. TRADE is a truthful and an individual rational mechanism with polynomial time complexity. It can prevent bidders from cheating in the auction while achieving good bidder satisfaction, spectrum utilization, and social welfare. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.