Contract Design for Time Resource Assignment and Pricing in Backscatter-Assisted RF-Powered Networks

Backscatter communication has been acknowledged as an essential supplement to improve the performance of radio-frequency-powered networks. Considering the fact that the backscatter communication needs the cooperation from the secondary gateway, pricing is an effective method to incentivize the secondary gateway to take part in the backscatter communication. In this letter, we consider a practical scenario, where the secondary gateway only knows the statistical information about the harvested power of the secondary transmitter, and develop a time resource assignment and pricing scheme for the network based on contract theory. Specifically, the secondary gateway designs a contract, including a series of time-price items, to maximize its profit. Then, the secondary transmitter accepts the contract item which can maximize its utility. We derive the optimal contract, which guarantees the incentive compatibility and the individual rationality properties. Numerical results are presented to verify the effectiveness of our designed contract.