• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.148-151
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• 2009

We consider the problem of optimizing the performance of a system with resources shared by non-cooperative users. The worst-cast ratio between the cost of a Nash equilibrium and the optimal cost, called Price of Anarchy, is investigated. It measures the performance degradation due to the users' selfish behavior. As the objective function of the optimization problem, we are concerned in a load balancing measure, which is different from that used in the previous works. Also we consider the Stackelberg scheduling which can assign a fraction of the users to resources while the remaining users are free to act in a selfish manner.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.221-227
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• 2009

There are customer services jointly provided by two facilities so that each customer will complete the course made up of both facilities' sub-services. The two facilities are assumed invested respectively by an infrastructure owner and one subordinate facility owner, whose partnership is built on their capital investments. This paper presents a mathematical model of Stackelberg competition between the two facility owners to derive their optimal Nash equilibrium. In this study, each facility owner's profit is consisted of fixed revenue fractions of sold services, operating costs (including depreciation cost) and maintenance costs of her facility. The maintenance costs of one facility are incurred both by failures and deterioration due to usage. Moreover, for both facilities, failures are rectified immediately by minimal repairs and preventive maintenance is carried out at a fixed time epoch. Additional assumptions are also employed to develop the model such as customer arrivals are manipulated to follow a Poisson process, and each facility's lifetime is independently Weibull-distributed. The Stackelberg game proceeds as follows. At the first stage of decision making process, the infrastructure owner (acting as a leader) decides the allocation of revenue shares based on her self-interest. After observing the allocation of revenue shares, the subordinate facility owner determines her own optimal price of services. This paper investigates actions and reactions of the two partners in the system. Then analytical conditions are proposed to achieve a unique optimal Nash equilibrium. Finally, some suggestions for further research are discussed.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.4291-4310
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• 2015

This paper investigates the traffic offloading over unlicensed bands for two-tier multi-mode small cell networks. We formulate this problem as a Stackelberg game and apply a hierarchical learning framework to jointly maximize the utilities of both macro base station (MBS) and small base stations (SBSs). During the learning process, the MBS behaves as a leader and the SBSs are followers. A pricing mechanism is adopt by MBS and the price information is broadcasted to all SBSs by MBS firstly, then each SBS competes with other SBSs and takes its best response strategies to appropriately allocate the traffic load in licensed and unlicensed band in the sequel, taking the traffic flow payment charged by MBS into consideration. Then, we present a hierarchical Q-learning algorithm (HQL) to discover the Stackelberg equilibrium. Additionally, if some extra information can be obtained via feedback, we propose an improved hierarchical Q-learning algorithm (IHQL) to speed up the SBSs' learning process. Last but not the least, the convergence performance of the proposed two algorithms is analyzed. Numerical experiments are presented to validate the proposed schemes and show the effectiveness.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.1973-1991
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• 2018

Multimedia applications over wireless networks have been evolving to augmented reality or virtual reality services. However, a rich data size compared to conventional multimedia services causes bandwidth bottlenecks over wireless networks, which is one of the main reasons why those applications are not used widely. To overcome this limitation, bandwidth aggregation techniques, which exploit a multi-path transmission, have been considered to maximize link utilization. Currently, most of the conventional researches have been focusing on the user end problems to improve the quality of service (QoS) through optimal load distribution. In this paper, we address the joint pricing and load distribution problem for multi-homing in heterogeneous wireless access networks (ANs), considering the interests of both the users and the service providers. Specifically, we consider profit from resource allocation and cost of power consumption expenditure for operation as an utility of each service provider. Here, users decide how much to request the resource and how to split the resource over heterogeneous wireless ANs to minimize their cost while supporting the required QoS. Then, service providers compete with each other by setting the price to maximize their utilities over user reactions. We study the behaviors of users and service providers by analyzing their hierarchical decision-making process as a multileader-, multifollower Stackelberg game. We show that both the user and service provider strategies are closed form solutions. Finally, we discuss how the proposed scheme is well converged to equilibrium points.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.139-149
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• 2004

As the expansion of road capacity has become impractical in many urban areas, congestion pricing has been widely considered as an effective method to reduce urban traffic congestion in recent years. The principal reason is that the congestion pricing may lead the user equilibrium (UE) flow pattern to system optimum (SO) pattern in road network. In the context of network equilibrium, the link tolls according to the marginal cost pricing principle can user an UE flow to a SO pattern. Thus, the pricing method offers an efficient tool for moving toward system optimal traffic conditions on the network. This paper proposes a continuous network design program (CNDP) in network equilibrium condition, in order to find optimal congestion toll for maximizing net economic benefit (NEB). The model could be formulated as a bi-level program with continuous variable(congestion toll) such that the upper level problem is for maximizing the NEB in elastic demand, while the lower level is for describing route choice of road users. The bi-level CNDP is intrinsically nonlinear, non-convex, and hence it might be difficult to solve. So, we suggest a heuristic solution algorithm, which adopt derivative information of link flow with respect to design parameter, or congestion toll. Two example networks are used for test of the model proposed in the paper.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.187-193
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• 2012

Nash Equilibrium (NE) is as useful tool for investigating a participant's strategic generation quantity in a competitive electricity market. Cournot model may give a mixed strategy NE instead of a pure strategy when transmission constraints are considered. A mixed strategy is difficult to compute, complicated to understand conceptually, and hard to implement in an electricity market practically. This paper presents that a mixed strategy does not appear in Stackelberg leader-follower model even under a transmission congestion. A solution method is proposed for the leader-follower model under a nondifferentiable space of a strategy variable. Based on the pure strategy NE with a transmission line congested, the merit of leader-follower model is shown from a social welfare point of view.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.100-105
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• 2017

In this paper, we study an interference avoidance scenario in the presence of a interferer which can rapidly observe the transmit power of backscatter communications and effectively interrupt backscatter signals. We consider a power control with a sub-channel allocation to avoid interference attacks and a power-splitting ratio for backscattering and RF energy harvesting in sensors. We formulate the problem based on a Stackelberg game theory and compute the optimal transmit power, power-splitting ratio, and sub-channel allocation parameter to maximize a utility function against the interferer. We propose the utility maximization using Lagrangian dual decomposition for the backscatter communications and the interferer to prove the existence of the Stackelberg equilibrium. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithms effectively maximize the utility, compared to that of the algorithm based on the Nash game, so as to overcome a malicious interference in backscatter communications.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.627-638
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• 2014

In this paper, we study the joint price and power allocation in spectrum sharing macro-femtocell networks. The proposed game theoretic framework is based on bi-level Stackelberg game where macro base station (MBS) works as a leader and underlaid femto base stations (FBSs) work as followers. MBS has fixed data rate and imposes interference price on FBSs for maintaining its data rate and earns revenue while FBSs jointly adjust their power for maximizing their data rates and utility functions. Since the interference from FBSs to macro user equipment is kept under a given threshold and FBSs compete against each other for power allocation, there is a need to determine a power allocation strategy which converges to Stackelberg equilibrium. We consider two cases for MBS power allocation, i.e., fixed and dynamic power. MBS can adjust its power in case of dynamic power allocation according to its minimum data rate requirement and number of FBSs willing to share the spectrum. For both cases we consider uniform and non-uniform pricing where MBS charges same price to all FBSs for uniform pricing and different price to each FBS for non-uniform pricing according to its induced interference. We obtain unique closed form solution for each case if the co-interference at FBSs is assumed fixed. And an iterative algorithm which converges rapidly is also proposed to take into account the effect of co-tier interference on interference price and power allocation strategy. The results are explained with numerical simulation examples which validate the effectiveness of our proposed solutions.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.4748-4765
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• 2016

We consider a virtualized cognitive radio (CR) network, where multiple virtual network operators (VNOs) who own different virtual cognitive base stations (VCBSs) share the same physical CBS (PCBS) which is owned by an infrastructure provider (InP), sharing the spectrum with the primary user (PU). The uplink scenario is considered where the secondary users (SUs) transmit to the VCBSs. The PU is protected by constraining the interference power from the SUs. Such constraint is applied by the InP through pricing the interference. A Stackelberg game is formulated to jointly maximize the revenue of the InP and the individual utilities of the VNOs, and then the Stackelberg equilibrium is investigated. Specifically, the optimal interference price and channel allocation for the VNOs to maximize the revenue of the InP and the optimal power allocation for the SUs to maximize the individual utilities of the VNOs are derived. In addition, a low‐complexity ±‐optimal solution is also proposed for obtaining the interference price and channel allocation for the VNOs. Simulations are provided to verify the proposed strategies. It is shown that the proposed strategies are effective in resource allocation and the ±‐optimal strategy achieves practically the same performance as the optimal strategy can achieve. It is also shown that the InP will not benefit from a large interference power limit, and selecting VNOs with higher unit rate utility gain to share the resources of the InP is beneficial to both the InP and the VNOs.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.55-79
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• 2010

This study deals with a model for platform competition in a two-sided market. We suppose there are both direct and indirect network externalities between suppliers and users of each platform. Moreover, we suppose that both users and suppliers are distributed in their relative affinity for each platform type. That is, each user [supplier] has his/her own preferential position toward each platform, and users [suppliers] are horizontally differentiated over [0, 1]. And for analytical tractability, some parameters like direct and indirect network externalities are the same across the markets. Given the parameters and the pricing profile, users and suppliers conduct subscription game, where participants select the platform that gives them the highest payoffs. This game proceeds according to a replicator dynamics of the evolutionary game, which is simplified by properly defining gains from participant's strategy in the subscription game. We find that depending on the strength of these network effects, there might either be multiple stable equilibria, at which users and suppliers distribute across both platforms, or one unstable interior equilibrium corresponding to the market tipping in favor of either platform. In both cases, we also consider the pricing power of competing platform providers under the framework of the Stackelberg game. In particular, our study examines the possible effects of the type of competition between platform providers, which may constrain the equilibrium selection in the subscription game.