A contract based approach for electric vehicles charging in heterogeneous networks

Abstract

With the help of mobile charging stations (MCSs), the charging service of electric vehicles (EVs) can be provided more easily with higher payoff and lower consumption, compared with the fixed charging stations (FCSs). Although many traditional approaches have been used to decide the pricing plans for FCSs, it can not be efficient to design the optimal pricing strategy for MCSs. In this paper, we propose a contract-based scheme to solve the problem of supplying power service to EV users. Firstly, considering quality of service (QoS) and mobility of MCS in the heterogeneous networks, we study and develop the utility function based on the relationship for MCS and EV users. Then, the charging problem for EV users is formulated as an optimization problem through the contract theory. Thirdly, we present the iterative algorithm to achieve the optimal solution. Our simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.