A Dynamic Incentive Pricing Scheme for Relaying Services in Multi-hop Cellular Networks

Applying peer-to-peer communications in cellular networks to improve performance has been an active research area in recent years. Cooperation among nodes is an important prerequisite for the success of the multi-hop cellular networks. Cost savings and service availability are the primary concerns that the network provider adopts multi-hop cellular networking technology. In this paper, we present a dynamic incentive pricing scheme to maximize the revenue of the network provider. The proposed scheme adjusts the price of the feedback incentives based on the network conditions to influence the relaying capability of the network and therefore increases the revenue of the network provider. The simulation results demonstrate that the revenue can be increased by dynamically adjusting the price of the incentives for relaying services. Moreover, the proposed pricing scheme results in more revenue but does not cause higher new call blocking probability in multi-hop cellular networks.