Online auctions with re-usable goods

This paper concerns the design of mechanisms for online scheduling in which agents bid for access to a re-usable resource such as processor time or wireless network access. Each agent is assumed to arrive and depart dynamically, and in the basic model require the resource for one unit of time. We seek mechanisms that are truthful in the sense that truthful revelation of arrival, departure and value information is a dominant strategy, and that are online in the sense that they make allocation decisions without knowledge of the future. First, we provide two characterizations for the class of truthful online allocation rules. The characterizations extend beyond the typical single-parameter settings, and formalize the role of restricted misreporting in reversing existing price-based characterizations. Second, we present an online auction for unit-length jobs that achieves total value that is 2-competitive with the maximum offline value. We prove that no truthful deterministic online mech...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SIGECOM
• Authors: Mohammad Taghi Hajiaghayi, Robert D. Kleinberg, Mohammad Mahdian, David C. Parkes
• Keywords: Online Auction, SIGECOM 2005, Truthful, Truthful Online Allocation