Collaborative Research: SII-NRDZ-SBE: Enabling Fairness-Aware and Privacy-Preserving Spatial Spectrum Sharing

世界范围内频谱使用的增加使得有效的频谱共享成为一个重要的经济话题。频谱共享的一种方式是允许从用户动态地使用主用户在特定时间和位置没有使用的频谱。设计频谱管理机制以促进效率、公平和隐私，同时防止共谋是至关重要的。效率保证了最看重频谱的频谱用户最终得到频谱。竞争保护确保了二级频谱购买者之间的相互勾结。特别是，su之间的串通行为可能导致PU获得较低的价格。从长远来看，PU将不愿意共享或出售频谱，导致这一重要资源没有得到充分利用。隐私规定频谱用户关于位置或价格的私人信息不会被泄露，这可以防止对宽带提供商或消费者的恶意攻击，以避免宽带中断或干扰。公平意味着类似的频谱用户受到类似的对待，从而在频谱共享中建立信任。研究小组采用经济学和计算机科学的方法，开发了考虑到所有四个属性的新型频谱共享机制。三个主要目标是：(1)构建在保持效率的同时保持竞争的机制，(2)设计确保效率的隐私保护方案，以及(3)确定满足所有四个属性的经济方法和算法。目前的频谱共享算法要么关注效率，要么关注隐私。研究人员同时考虑了这两种属性，以及竞争保护和公平。这项研究提高了那些对隐私保护、公平和联合预防感兴趣的拍卖研究人员的知识，以及那些对这些机制的实施感兴趣的人。特别是，在推力1中，考虑到谈判能力和信息可用性，新的拍卖机制包括位置，以提高频谱效率并防止共谋。此外，尽管在经济文献中很少有隐私保护机制，但隐私保护是最近流行的一个话题。推力2增加了如何在博弈论框架中实现更高的频谱利用率和用户位置隐私的知识。定位混淆机制和效用函数的新算法将更适合定向传输的空间频谱共享。推力3侧重于新的经济方法和算法，将确保空间频谱的联合竞争保护、效率、公平和隐私。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Worldwide increase in spectrum usage has made efficient spectrum sharing an important economic topic. One way to share the spectrum is to allow secondary users (SUs) to dynamically utilize the spectrum that primary users (PUs) do not use at a particular time and location. It is vital to design spectrum management mechanisms to promote efficiency, fairness, and privacy while preventing collusion. Efficiency ensures that the spectrum users who value the spectrum the most end up with it. Competition preservation ensures that collusion among secondary spectrum buyers is prevented. In particular, collusive behaviors among SUs can result in a lower price awarded to the PU. In the long run, the PU will be less willing to share or sell the spectrum, resulting in this important resource not being fully utilized. Privacy establishes that a spectrum user’s private information regarding location or pricing is not revealed, which prevents malicious attacks to a broadband provider or consumer to avoid broadband outages or interference. Fairness establishes that similar spectrum users are treated similarly, thus creating trust in spectrum sharing. The research team employs methods from economics and computer science to develop novel spectrum sharing mechanisms that take account of all four properties. The three main objectives are (1) to construct mechanisms that preserve competition while maintaining efficiency, (2) to design privacy preservation schemes that ensure efficiency, and (3) to identify economic approaches and algorithms that meet all four properties. Current spectrum sharing algorithms generally focus on either maintaining efficiency or privacy. The researchers consider both of these properties at the same time as well as competition preservation and fairness. The research enhances the knowledge of those studying auctions who are interested in privacy preservation, fairness, and coalition prevention as well as those interested in the implementation of such mechanisms. In particular, in Thrust 1, new auction mechanisms include location, in consideration of negotiation power and information availability, to increase spectral efficiency and prevent collusion. Furthermore, privacy preservation is a topic that has become popular recently although there are few privacy preservation mechanisms in the economic literature. Thrust 2 adds to the knowledge of how to achieve both higher spectral utilization and user location privacy in a game-theoretic framework. Novel algorithms for location obfuscation mechanisms and utility functions will be more suitable for spatial spectrum sharing with directional transmissions. Thrust 3 focuses on new economic approaches and algorithms will ensure joint competition preservation, efficiency, fairness, and privacy in spatial spectrum.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.