A QoE-Driven Pricing Scheme for Inter-Vehicular Communications With Four-Stage Stackelberg Game

With emergence of self-driving vehicles and multimedia rich Internet of Things (IoTs), Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC) is at rise. IVC has the potential to radically improve the efficiency, safety, and comfort of everyday road travel without needing expensive roadside infrastructure. Nevertheless, a proficient way to quantify and price the multimedia services provided through IVC are yet to be fully investigated. The primary objective of this paper is to develop a Quality of Experience (QoE)-centric pricing model for the multimedia services provided through IVC by seamlessly integrating the multimedia QoE pricing concept. The developed model aims to motivate multimedia-driven vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication by allowing the end-user vehicles to achieve higher QoE and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) by incentivizing neighboring vehicles participating in relaying the multimedia content. Utility maximization between the base station seller, relaying vehicle and the mobile user consumer is modeled using the proposed economic pricing orchestration. Realistically, we translate the three-party interaction into a four-stage Stackelberg game. In addition, we derive the Nash Equilibrium using backward induction and provide an algorithm for future implementation reference. Simulation studies demonstrate the efficacy of developed model and reveal that all three parties achieve reasonable utilities where the Stackelberg equilibrium exists stably.