Dynamic access pricing control for fair and stable resource sharing

We consider the use of pricing as a regulatory mechanism when an unknown number of autonomous agents compete for access to a shared resource (possibly limited in volume or capacity). In standard dynamic pricing control systems, an increasing price is used to balance supply and demand for a resource in a constrained environment. A major drawback of dynamic pricing is that it is socially regressive, i.e., unfair, as such systems favour price-insensitive (unresponsive) traffic and control the demand at the expense of price-sensitive (responsive) traffic. We tackle this fundamental issue by proposing a new form of pricing that strikes a balance between using price as a control mechanism to manage demand for a resource and ensuring fair access to the resource for both price-sensitive and insensitive traffic. Our system gives rise to a switched non-linear ODE model, the stability of which is equivalent to ensuring the fairness properties of the pricing control system. Simulations illustrate this stability-fairness tradeoff and with the results demonstrating the effectiveness of the overall design.