UAV Base Station Network Transmission-Based Reverse Auction Mechanism for Digital Twin Utility Maximization

Digital twin (DT) technology uses Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect real-world data and build a virtual world in the DT cloud. However, many IoT devices collect data in harsh natural environments, and these data cannot be transmitted through fixed base stations. Thus, many DT services adopt dynamic data transmission methods, such as transmission through unmanned aerial vehicle base stations (UAV-BSs). However, UAV-BS approaches have many communication constraints, such as limitations on the transmission bandwidth, data throughput, and number of channels. In addition, when integrating a large amount of data submitted by IoT devices, DT service providers need a corresponding mechanism to select the most valuable device data, which can be described by a winner decision problem with the goal of maximizing utility. In this paper, we consider the problem of maximizing the utility of a DT model under UAV-BS network transmission, transform it into a mixed integer programming model with communication and computing constraints, and adopt a reverse auction mechanism to solve it. Specifically, we design an optimal reverse auction mechanism based on optimal allocation and Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) theory. Additionally, a reverse auction mechanism with polynomial execution time is designed based on monotonic allocation, network maximum flow and critical value theory. These two mechanisms are proven to satisfy individual rationality and truthfulness. Experimental results indicate the favorable performance of the designed mechanisms.