Game‐theoretic auction design for bandwidth sharing in helper‐assisted P2P streaming

Video traffic offloading through the helper peers can significantly alleviate the server workload and enhance users' quality of experience. In this paper, the complex interactions of a number of helpers seeking to trade their bandwidth surplus in a peer‐to‐peer market are studied using non‐cooperative game theory and double auction. In particular, a non‐cooperative game is formulated among the helpers in which each helper can make a decision on the maximum amount of upload bandwidth surplus that it is willing to sell so as to maximize its utility function that reflects the tradeoff between the benefits from bandwidth sharing and its associated costs. Then, the price governing the bandwidth trading market between the helpers and peers is determined via a truthful double auction mechanism. To solve the game, an algorithm based on the best response dynamics is proposed using which helpers can reach a Nash equilibrium point. Simulation results exhibit that the proposed algorithm achieves significant performance improvements in terms of utility per selling helpers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.