Dynamic Contract Incentive Mechanism for Cooperative Wireless Networks

Cooperative communication is a promising technique to mitigate channel impairment and improve spectral efficiency. Due to the mobility of relay nodes (RNs) and the unfavourable effects of wireless channels, channel conditions may change as time passes. Therefore, how to design proper long-term incentive mechanisms for RNs in such dynamic communication environments is an essential issue. This paper investigates the contract incentive method under asymmetric information scenario, where the relay channel condition and cost are the RNs' private information. To capture the dynamic characteristic of the RNs' cooperative information during the long-term cooperation, two dynamic contract mechanisms are introduced into long-term relay incentive with different RNs' relay information structures. The optimal contract is derived to maximize the source's expected utility for both independent asymmetric information and correlated asymmetric information. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic contract-based incentive mechanism.