A Pricing-Based Cooperative Relay Selection Scheme for Reliable Communications

With the rapid development and application of energy harvesting technology, it has become a prominent research area due to its significant benefits in terms of green environmental protection, convenience, and high safety and efficiency.However, the uneven energy collection and consumption among IoT devices at varying distances may lead to resource imbalance within energy harvesting networks, thereby resulting in low energy transmission efficiency. To enhance the energy transmission efficiency of IoT devices in energy harvesting, this paper focuses on the utilization of collaborative communication, along with pricing-based incentive mechanisms and auction strategies. We propose a dynamic relay selection scheme, including a ladder pricing mechanism based on energy level and a Kuhn-Munkre Algorithm based on an auction theory employing a negotiation mechanism, to encourage more IoT devices to participate in the collaboration process. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms traditional algorithms in terms of improving the energy efficiency of the system.