An Incentive-Compatible Mechanism for Transmission Scheduling of Delay-Sensitive Medical Packets in E-Health Networks

摘要

In this paper, an incentive-compatible mechanism for transmission scheduling in electronic health (e-health) networks with delay-sensitive medical packets is studied. Unlike existing works in the literature, we focus on the beyond wireless body area network (beyond-WBAN) communications. In the considered system, medical packets arrive randomly at each gateway (which ordinarily stands for one patient), and their transmission requests are reported to the network regulator (i.e., the base station) with specific delay sensitivities that reflect their medical signal severities. The base station then determines the order of transmission by formulating a priority queue. With the construction of the packets' utility and the base station's profit functions, we analyze the characteristics of the service system and design an incentive-compatible mechanism such that all gateways will be forced to report the actual delay sensitivities of their medical packets. Theoretical analyses show that our proposed mechanism can maximize the profit of the base station (i.e., minimize the total waiting cost from all medical packet transmissions) while guaranteeing higher service priorities to more emergent medical packets. Numerical results examine the properties of the proposed mechanism, and demonstrate its feasibility in providing economic incentives for all individuals.