Incentive mechanisms for device-to-device communications

D2D communication has recently been proposed as a promising technique to improve resource utilization of cellular networks by offloading the traffic through base stations to local direct links between devices. While various optimization frameworks have been intensively studied, little attention has been given to how to attract users to adopt D2D communication. In this article we fill the gap by designing incentive mechanisms to encourage users to work under D2D mode. We consider two basic market types, open markets and sealed markets, where users have information of all users or only their own, respectively. For open markets, we design a Stackelberg game based incentive mechanism that can achieve Nash equilibrium. For sealed markets, we design an auction based incentive mechanism that guarantees truthfulness.