Incentive Mechanisms and Influence of Negotiation Power in Multi-Relay Cooperative Wireless Networks

Cooperative relaying in wireless networks is strongly affected by the way that the source and relays are incentivized. However, existing studies have not paid enough attention to the influence of negotiation power of the involved parties. In this paper, two incentive mechanisms for cooperative relaying are proposed, wherein the source possesses different degrees of negotiation power. One mechanism is for the source with strong negotiation power posting a series of take-it-or-leave-it contract offers for the relays while the relays are not entitled to negotiate the counteroffers, and the other mechanism is for the source with weak negotiation power while the relays confer substantial negotiation power, i.e., are capable of doing business with the source by crafting more profitable deals. The relay selection rules, the optimal amounts of relaying service, and the optimal rewards for the relays, are derived for the proposed mechanisms, respectively. A distributed algorithm is further proposed to iteratively obtain the optimal solution for the second mechanism. A case study is also presented to show the influence of negotiation power on the behaviors of the participants and the efficiency and distribution of profits. Numerical results are provided to verify the theoretical analyses of the proposed mechanisms.