Pricing Methodology and Its Applications in Cognitive Radio and Multi-Tier Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Abstract

In this chapter, we concentrate on different technical applications and research directions of pricing theory and methodology, where we investigate following technical applications and functions of pricing including cooperative incentive mechanism design, Pareto- and social optimality improvement, distributed algorithm design with the low signaling overhead. We first clarify different concepts of pricing, summarize the motivation, present a taxonomy according to these different technical applications. Then, we survey applications of pricing theory and methodology with understandings and observations in cognitive radio and multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks. We emphasize some of the recent critical problems, such as the cooperation incentive, resource and interference management and economics of small cells. Finally, we conclude this chapter with the possible research directions and more potential network applications of pricing theory and methodology.