Wireless Power Provision as a Public Good

Wireless power transfer (WPT) technology enables a cost-effective and sustainable energy supply in wireless networks, where energy users (EUs) can remotely harvest energy from the wireless signal transmitted by energy transmitters (ETs). However, the broadcast nature of wireless signal makes wireless power a non-excludable public good, which renders the traditional market mechanisms inefficient due to the possibility of the free riders. In this study, we formulate the transmit power provision problem in a single-channel WPT network as a public good provision problem, aiming to maximize the social welfare of all the ET and EUs considering their private information and selfish behaviors. The considered problem also brings both economic and technical challenges in ensuring voluntary participation and distributed algorithm design. To this end, we propose a twophase all-or-none procedure involving a low-complexity Power And Taxation (PAT) Nash mechanism, which ensures voluntary participation, incentive compatibility, and budget balance, and yields the socially optimal transmit power at all Nash equilibria. We further propose a distributed D-PAT Algorithm and prove its convergence by exploiting the connection between the structure of Nash equilibria and that of the optimal solutions to a related optimization problem. Finally, our simulation results validate the PAT Mechanism and the practical algorithm. We show that our design can significantly improve the social welfare compared to the benchmark market mechanism, especially when there are many and relatively comparable EUs.