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Preferences and Utility Functions

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Wireless Networks

  • 55 Accesses

Synonyms

Preferences; Valuations; Willingness-to-pay

Definition

Utility functions are a mathematical representation of an individual’s preferences for different goods and services.

Motivation

The notion of utility is motivated by a basic problem faced when allocating limited resources (such as bandwidth or power) to users of a wireless network: How should one account for differences in the users’ needs for these resources? These differences can arise due to users running different applications that require different quality of service (QoS) levels or even for the same application due to differences in how users perceive changes in QoS. Moreover, modern wireless networks exist in evolving market structures with multiple competing firms using heterogeneous technologies. Understanding how this competition and the regulation around it impact end users again requires modeling user preferences for different services. The concept of utility is a way of providing a common metric for...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Randall A. Berry

Authors
  1. Randall A. Berry
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Randall A. Berry .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo , Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Xuemin (Sherman) Shen

  2. Faculty of Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

    Xiaodong Lin

  3. Dpt.of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

    Kuan Zhang

Section Editor information

  1. No affiliation provided

    Jianwei Huang

  2. No affiliation provided

    Yuan Luo

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Cite this entry

Berry, R.A. (2018). Preferences and Utility Functions. In: Shen, X., Lin, X., Zhang, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Wireless Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32903-1_21-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32903-1_21-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-32903-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-32903-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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