A Secondary Market for Spectrum

Dynamic spectrum trading amongst small cognitive users is fundamentally different along two axes: temporal variation, and spatial variation of user demands and channel conditions. The authors advocate that a spectrum secondary market, analogous to the stock market, is to be established to dynamically trade among users their channel holdings obtained in the primary market from legacy owners. They design a market mechanism based on dynamic double auctions, creating a marketplace in the air to match bandwidth demand with supply. In the analysis they prove important economic properties of the mechanism, notably its truthfulness and asymptotical efficiency in maximizing spectrum utilization.