BidPacket: trading bandwidth in public spaces

Bernardo A. Huberman () and Sitaram Asur ()
Additional contact information
Bernardo A. Huberman: Hewlett Packard Labs
Sitaram Asur: Hewlett Packard Labs

Netnomics, 2016, vol. 17, issue 3, 223-232

Abstract: Abstract Smart devices such as smartphones and tablets are used extensively in public spaces for the transmission and reception of content in the form of text, photos and streaming videos. Since the bandwidth provided for wireless access is limited in public areas, it becomes an issue for users to gain access to the bandwidth they need at the right times. While an omniscient controller could assign bandwidth to each device on the basis of their needs and overall availability, imperfect information about the instantaneous state of the wifi access patterns and needs of users make for a very inefficient allocation of such bandwidth. This paper provides a solution for bandwidth allocation by creating a market among users of smart devices so that they can bid for extra bandwidth when they need it and sell it when they don’t. They do so by using a virtual currency that is conserved so that each device owner maximizes his own utility. This utility function is composed of both the benefit accrued from accessing bandwidth and the loss of the currency incurred in bidding for such bandwidth. Extensive simulations show that this market-based method outperforms an omniscient model when demand is uncertain, while minimizing bandwidth consumption.

Keywords: Bandwidth allocation; Trading market; Virtual currency; Economic models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11066-016-9109-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:netnom:v:17:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11066-016-9109-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/11066/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11066-016-9109-z

Access Statistics for this article

Netnomics is currently edited by Stefan Voß

More articles in Netnomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().