Abstract-In this paper, we design a bandwidth pricing mechanism that solves congestion problems in communication networks. The scheme is based on second-price auctions, which are known to be incentive compatible when a single indivisible item is to be sold (users have no interest to lie about the price they are willing to pay for the resource) and to lead to an efficient allocation of resources in the sense that it maximizes social welfare. We prove these properties when an infinitely divisible resource (bandwidth on a communication link) is to be shared among users who are allowed to submit several bids when they want to establish a connection. Our scheme is highly related to the Progressive Second Price Auction of Lazar and Semret where players bid sequentially until an (optimal) equilibrium is reached. While keeping their incentive compatibility and efficiency properties, our scheme presents the advantage that the multi-bid is submitted once only, saving a lot of signalization overhead.

Abstract-Electric Vehicles (EVs), as their penetration increases, are not only challenging the sustainability of the power grid, but also stimulating and promoting its upgrading. Indeed, EVs can actively reinforce the development of the Smart Grid if their charging processes are properly coordinated through twoway communications, possibly benefiting all types of actors.Because grid systems involve a large number of actors with nonaligned objectives, we focus on the economic and incentive aspects, where each actor behaves in its own interest. We indeed believe that the market structure will directly impact the actors' behaviors, and as a result the total benefits that the presence of EVs can earn the society, hence the need for a careful design. This survey provides an overview of economic models considering unidirectional energy flows, but also bidirectional energy flows, i.e., with EVs temporarily providing energy to the grid. We describe and compare the main approaches, summarize the requirements on the supporting communication systems, and propose a classification to highlight the most important results and lacks.

Abstract-In 3G wireless technologies, competitive operators are assigned a fixed part of the spectrum from long-term auctions. This is known to lead to utilization inefficiencies because some providers can be congested while others are lightly used. Moreover it forbids the entrance of new candidate providers. There is now a stream of work dealing with spectrum sharing among providers to lead to a better utilization. In this paper, we study an intermediate model of price competition between two providers having a fixed (licensed) part of the spectrum, but where a remaining part (an unlicensed band) can be used in case of congestion, and is therefore shared. We discuss the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium in the pricing game when demand is distributed among providers according to Wardrop's principle so that users choose the least expensive perceived price (when congestion pricing is used), and investigate the influence of the shared band on social and user welfare.

Pricing telecommunication networks has become a highly regarded topic during the last decade, in order to cope with congestion by controlling demand, or to yield proper incentives for a fair sharing of resources. On the other hand, another important factor has to be brought in: there is a rise of competition between service providers in telecommunication networks such as for instance the Internet, and the impact of this competition has to be carefully analyzed. The present paper pertains to this recent stream of works. We consider a slotted resource allocation game with several providers, each of them having a fixed capacity during each time slot, and a fixed access price. Each provider serves its demand up to its capacity, demand in excess being dropped. Total user demand is therefore split among providers according to Wardrop's principle, depending on price and loss probability. Using the characterization of the resulting equilibrium, we prove, under mild conditions, the existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium in the pricing game between providers. We also show that, remarkably, this equilibrium actually corresponds to the socially optimal situation obtained when both users and providers cooperate to maximize the sum of all utilities, this even if providers have the opportunity to artificially reduce their capacity.