Joint resource and price competition in wireless sensor network-based service provision

摘要

A business model for the provision of wireless sensor network (WSN)-based services is proposed, where there exist three roles in the market: the WSNs, which provide sensing data; the service providers, which gather the data and compose useful services for the users; and end users. We assess an affine pricing scheme for the acquisition of the WSNs data and analyze the model in a duopoly scenario by means of game theory. The competition outcome is compared against a social optimum outcome. We show that the pricing scheme avoids that the providers use all available resources and that the prices are kept low, so that the consumer surplus improves at the expense of the providers profits and the overall social welfare.