A. S. Shafigh, P. Mertikopoulos, and S. Glisic. In ICC '16: Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2016.
In this paper, a novel paradigm of user-provided connectivity in wireless networks is introduced using certain class of wireless terminals that can be turned temporarily into access points at any time while connected to the Internet. We show that a DNA (dynamic network architecture) model improves the connectivity and capacity of ultra-dense wireless access networks without need to reconfigure the network infrastructure. The DNA operators motivate terminals to participate in this concept by providing incentives. An example is to allow terminals to transmit additional free traffic volume if they share their free bandwidth by acting as access points. The DNA operators manage the dynamic network in order to maximize their own profit by adjusting jointly their price and incentive rate. In addition, we model the joint problem of operator pricing and user resource sharing as a non-cooperative game and the resulting game admits a unique Nash equilibrium solution. Simulation results show high gains in such networks for terminals acting as access points and operators.