Incentive Systems

In recent years, purchasing performance measurement have steadily gained in importance in theory and practice. Yet, in many cases, the focus still remains on cost items, especially savings. Moreover, reported performance ratios in purchasing are frequently called into question in terms of their amount and efficacy. Most of the time, there is no tie-in at all with staff compensations. To meet these and other challenges, this book presents a holistic approach for purchasing performance measurement and the incentive systems associated with it.

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) is emerging as a novel sensing paradigm in the Internet of Things (IoTs) due to the proliferation of smart devices (e.g., smartphones, wearable devices) in people’s daily lives. These ubiquitous devices provide an opportunity to harness the wisdom of crowds by recruiting mobile users to collectively perform sensing tasks, which largely collect data about a wide range of human activities and the surrounding environment. However, users suffer from resource consumption such as battery, processing power, and storage, which discourages users’ participation. To ensure the participation rate, it is necessary to employ an incentive mechanism to compensate users’ costs such that users are willing to take part in crowdsensing.

This book focuses on the design of decentralized optimization methods applied to charging strategies for large-scale PEVs in electrical power systems. It studies several classes of charging coordination problems in large-scale PEVs by considering the distinct characteristics of PEV populations and electrical power systems, and subsequently designs decentralized methods based on distinct optimization schemes – such as non-cooperative games, mean-field games, and auction games – to achieve optimal/nearly optimal charging strategies.

Deeply rooted in fundamental research in Mathematics and Computer Science, Cellular Automata (CA) are recognized as an intuitive modeling paradigm for Complex Systems. Already very basic CA, with extremely simple micro dynamics such as the Game of Life, show an almost endless display of complex emergent behavior. Conversely, CA can also be designed to produce a desired emergent behavior, using either theoretical methodologies or evolutionary techniques. Meanwhile, beyond the original realm of applications - Physics, Computer Science, and Mathematics – CA have also become work horses in very different disciplines such as epidemiology, immunology, sociology, and finance.

This book initially delves into its fundamentals to initiate the exploration of online incentive mechanisms in wireless communications. Three case studies are provided to elaborate details on designing online mechanism design in practical system. For crowdsensing with random task arrivals, this book introduces a linear online incentive mechanism model with insurance of the quality of information for each incoming task. In the context of edge computing systems, the authors model a nonlinear online incentive mechanism with the consideration of mobile users’ energy budget constraints. It also explores online incentive mechanism for collaborative task offloading in mobile edge computing to achieve on-arrival instant responses. This book not only disseminates current knowledge but also sheds light on future research directions.