Collaborative Research: Virtualized Wireless Networks and Their Impact on Capacity Markets

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This project develops a new vision for wireless networks, predicated on the creation of service-driven virtual networks constructed from a pool for resources that belong to a variety of stakeholders. The resources include spectrum, physical infrastructure, and control and management support, and the stakeholders include traditional mobile operators, operators of WiFi access networks, businesses and households that support wireless connectivity through small cell deployment, traffic aggregators (such as Mobile Virtual Network Operators [MVNOs]), and regulators. The resulting architecture separates the consumer-facing service provision from the technologies used to construct the network, enabling the disintermediation of current wireless service provision systems. Moving the point at which network access transactions take place up the value chain (or the protocol stack) means that a greater range of service types can be provided to consumers without requiring large up-front capital investments on the part of the (consumer-facing) service providers. This will have profound impact on both industry and society, affecting the way that these networks are designed and built, spectrum and infrastructure resources are managed, and pricing structures for services provided over the network.This project first defines a new architecture that enables the virtualization of a wireless network over a combination of spectrum licensed under different regimes and infrastructure with different ownership. Relying on game theoretic and market models of virtual network construction, new resource management mechanisms are designed to select the appropriate set of resources to build a virtual wireless network with given coverage and capacity requirements. Combinatorial auctions for multiple objects are practical mechanisms for the dynamic allocation and aggregation of resources for such a virtualized wireless network. In analyzing the impact of the proposed architecture on spectrum markets, a key question is whether the incorporation of a virtualized spectrum commodity influences the viability of these markets (as measured by the liquidity outcome), and how this compares to previous scenarios in which the traded commodity was the physical spectrum resource or 'naked spectrum;. Finally, this project explores how markets in virtual wireless capacity would work when implemented in current wireless networks, in the context of LTE-Advanced and expected 5G developments.