Dynamic Inter-Operator Spectrum Sharing via Lyapunov Optimization

The problem of spectrum sharing between two operators in a dynamic network is considered. We allow both operators to share (a fraction of) their licensed spectrum band with each other by forming a common spectrum band. The objective is to maximize the gain in profits of both operators by sharing their licensed spectrum bands rather than using them exclusively, while considering the fairness among the operators. This is modeled as a two-person bargaining problem, and cast as a stochastic optimization. To solve this problem, we propose centralized and distributed dynamic control algorithms. At each time slot, the proposed algorithms perform the following tasks: 1) determine spectrum price for the operators; 2) make flow control decisions of users data; and 3) jointly allocate spectrum band to the operators and design transmit beamformers, which is known as resource allocation (RA). Since the RA problem is NP-hard, we have to rely on sequential convex programming to approximate its solution. To derive the distributed algorithm, we use alternating direction method of multipliers for solving the RA problem. Numerically, we show that the proposed distributed algorithm achieves almost the same performance as the centralized one. Furthermore, the results show that there is a trade-off between the achieved profits of the operators and the network congestion.