Title: Cognitive Virtual Network Operator Games

Time：4.26 11：00-12:00

Speaker: Jianwei Huang， Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Place：FIT 1-315

Abstract: Cognitive virtual network operator (CVNO) is an operator who provides services to the secondary unlicensed wireless devices without actually owning the wireless spectrum. Compared with a traditional virtual network operator who often leases spectrum via long-term contracts, a CVNO can acquire spectrum dynamically in short-term by both sensing the “spectrum holes” of licensed bands and leasing from the spectrum owner. As a result, a CVNO can make flexible investment and pricing decisions to match the current demands of the secondary unlicensed users. We discuss two scenarios in this talk. In the first case, a monopoly CVNO makes the optimal investment and pricing decisions with supply uncertainty. The system can be modeled as a four-stage Stackelberg game. In the second case, two CVNOs compete with each other to attract the demands from the same pool of end-users. We model this system as a three-stage multi-leader dynamic game. In both cases, we characterize the existence and uniqueness of the subgame perfect equilibrium, and show various interesting structures in terms of operators’ investment/pricing decisions and the end-users’ QoS. This is a joint work with Lingjie Duan and Biying Shou.

Biography:

Jianwei Huang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Southeast University (Nanjing, Jiangsu, China) in 2000, M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, USA) in 2003 and 2005, respectively. He worked as a Postdoc Research Associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University during 2005-2007, and as a summer intern in Motorola (Arlington Heights, IL, USA) in 2004 and 2005.

Dr. Huang currently leads the Network Communications and Economics Lab (ncel.ie.cuhk.edu.hk) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He conducts research in the area of nonlinear optimization and game theoretical analysis of communication networks, with current focus on network economics, cognitive radio networks, broadband communication networks, and multimedia over wireless. He is the recipient of the IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009, Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications Best Paper Award in 2009, and Walter P. Murphy Fellowship at Northwestern University in 2001.

Dr. Huang has been an Associate Editor of (Elsevier) Journal of Computer & Electrical Engineering, the Lead Guest Editor of IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications special issue on “Game Theory in Communication Systems”, the Lead Guest Editor of Journal of Communications special issue on “Cognitive-Radio Enabled Communications and Networking”, the Lead Guest Editor of Journal of Advances in Multimedia special issue on “Collaboration and Optimization in Multimedia Communications”, and a Guest Editor of Journal of Advances in Multimedia special issue on “Cross-layer Optimized Wireless Multimedia Communications”. He serves as the TPC co-chair of the International Conference on Game Theory for Networks 2009, the TPC co-chair of IEEE Globecom Wireless Communications Symposium 2010, the TPC co-chair of the International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference Mobile Computing Symposium 2010, and TPC member of various conferences such as INFOCOM, MobiHoc, ICC, and WCNC.