Price-Based Power Allocation in Energy Harvesting Wireless Cooperative Networks: A Stackelberg Game Approach

In this letter, a wireless cooperative network is considered, in which multiple source-destination pairs communicate with each other via an energy harvesting relay. We propose a price-based power allocation scheme to distribute the harvested energy among the multiple users. We model the interaction between the relay and the destinations as a Stackelberg game and then study the joint utility maximization of the relay and the destination. The Stackelberg equilibriums for the proposed game are characterized. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in comparison with the uniform pricing algorithm.