Gupta’s research collaboration with Professor Koushik Kar in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering received one of 19 ARRA grants awarded to Rensselaer totaling $4.8 million. Gupta and Kar will be working with Saswati Sakar, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Their multidisciplinary research project will examine the rapidly growing market for wireless transmission services.
The tremendous recent growth and projected continued expansion in use of the wireless spectrum, coupled with the limited “supply,” will require effective management to meet growing demand. How can spectrum markets be designed to optimally exploit the available spectrum in licensed bands? Using tools from financial engineering and economics, the research project, entitled “NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Financial Dynamics of Spectrum Trading” will study wireless transmission bandwidth contracting mechanisms at different levels of dynamism, spectrum-portfolio construction that optimizes risk-versus-return tradeoffs, and strategy design for optimal cooperation among wireless providers. Researchers will also investigate price-driven scheduling of subscribers, optimal pricing to subscribers, and design of regulatory mechanisms for effective market function.
The authors propose a hierarchical market structure with primary and secondary providers and retail subscribers/users of wireless services. The wireless spectrum market structure considered is grounded in the researchers’ experience in the business and technology of bandwidth contracting in current communication systems, and in basic economic principles with which financial markets operate. The proposed hierarchical market structure parallels how bandwidth contracting is done in the internet and cellular networks, through nationwide, regional and local providers. It also closely resembles the structure of financial markets.
The authors believe the proposed project will constitute transformative research, since, if successful, it would:
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revolutionize spectrum trading by facilitating the design of secondary spectrum market and spectrum regulation policies, and
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establish a new cross-disciplinary field where many important quality-of-service provisioning questions in communication networks will be studied in a demand-driven, free market environment involving principles from financial engineering.
Gupta Koushik
Educational Gaming Application
The researchers are also committed to make proactive and conscious efforts to increase the participation of women and minorities in engineering. Special efforts will be made to enhance the research and educational experience of undergraduate and high-school students through an interactive gaming application, SpectrumTrader, which requires participants to play the roles of market providers or subscribers and trade virtual wireless service contracts in a random, demand-driven environment.
About the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
ARRA has resulted in the largest increase in basic research funding in American history. The recovery act funding, intended to stimulate the domestic economy and invest in the nation’s scientific and technological prowess, is benefiting a wide variety of academic and research programs at Rensselaer. This funding will result in the advancement of ongoing research programs, the start of new research programs, the hiring of researchers, the support of graduate students, and the purchase of equipment and instruments.
Rensselaer’s recovery act funding, granted competitively through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), is helping to expand the Institute’s research portfolio and advance the Institute’s goal of innovating solutions to the grand challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.
Read more about Rensselaer’s ARRA Grants.
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Aparna Gupta, Assistant Professor, Finance and Accounting, The Lally School of Management & Technology