Contract-Based Incentive Mechanisms for Device-to-Device Communications in Cellular Networks

Abstract

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is viewed as one promising technology to boost the capacity of wireless networks and the efficiency of resource management. D2D communication heavily depends on the participation of users in sharing contents. Thus, it is imperative to introduce new incentive mechanisms to motivate such user involvement. In this paper, a contract-theoretic approach is proposed to solve the problem of providing incentives for D2D communication in cellular networks. First, using the framework of contract theory, the users' preferences towards D2D communication are classified into a finite number of types, and the service trading between the base station and users is properly modeled. Next, necessary and sufficient conditions are derived to provide incentives for users' engagement in D2D communication. Finally, our analysis is extended to the case in which there is a continuum of users. Simulation results show that the contract can effectively incentivize users' participation, and increase capacity of the cellular network than the other mechanisms.

Social‐Aware Device‐to‐Device Offloading Based on Experimental Mobility and Content Similarity Models

“…Data sharing over device-to-device (D2D) links has been shown to provide a multitude of performance gains in terms of throughput and spectral efficiency enhancement [4][5][6], energy consumption reduction [7][8][9][10], and end user cost savings and incentives [11][12][13]. However, reliable and efficient D2D data sharing in practice hinges on several factors that include content availability, users' proximity and ability to connect to each other, users' mobility patterns, and contact intervals [14], in addition to other aspects such as cooperation incentives and trust establishment [15,16].…”

Contract Design for Traffic Offloading and Resource Allocation in Heterogeneous Ultra-Dense Networks

“…According to contract theory, an incentive mechanism can be realized, which will encourage every employee to consciously choose the contract designed to its service capability. It has been applied into the resource allocation problems for device-to-device communications [31], heterogeneous Long-term Evlution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks [32] and heterogeneous cloud-based radio access networks [33]. The classic contract theory is based on the definition of different employee types, which is just considered as an abstract index without any specific definition in the aforementioned studies.…”

A Signaling-Based Incentive Mechanism for Device-to-Device Content Sharing in Cellular Networks

“…Contract theory is a powerful model to analyze incentive problem with information asymmetry from economics [10], and has been adopted in some contemporary research work [11]- [12]. In the contract-theoretical model, the BS play as the principal, who outsources the data transmission work to some content provider UEs near the content requester UE.…”

“…Nazari and Jamalipour adopted the contract and auction theory to design a forwarding incentive mechanism for multi-relay cooperative wireless networks [11]. Zhang et al [12] proposed a contract-based incentive mechanism for content dissemination in D2D cooperative communications. The incentive mechanisms in [11]- [12] employs the screening mechanism from contract theory to solve the Information Asymmetry problem -the transmission ability of the agents toward the content requester are naturally known to themselves, but not known to the principal.…”

“…Zhang et al [12] proposed a contract-based incentive mechanism for content dissemination in D2D cooperative communications. The incentive mechanisms in [11]- [12] employs the screening mechanism from contract theory to solve the Information Asymmetry problem -the transmission ability of the agents toward the content requester are naturally known to themselves, but not known to the principal. In screening model, the principal (i.e., the BS) offers a menu of contracts to the agents to separate different types of agents, and the agents' choices reveals their types (transmission abilities).…”