{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,1]],"date-time":"2026-08-01T20:20:11Z","timestamp":1785615611708,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,12,14]],"date-time":"2018-12-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1544745600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["61701322, 61702355"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61701322, 61702355"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Daze Scholar Project of Suzhou University","award":["2018SZXYDZXZ01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018SZXYDZXZ01"]}]},{"name":"Key Projects of Liaoning Natural Science Foundation","award":["20170540700"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["20170540700"]}]},{"name":"Liaoning Provincial Department of Education 362 Science Foundation","award":["L201630"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["L201630"]}]},{"name":"Scientific Research Program of Outstanding Young Talents in Universities of Fujian Province","award":["JAT170457, MJUKF201737, 2018J01806"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JAT170457, MJUKF201737, 2018J01806"]}]},{"name":"Major Project of Natural Science of Education Department 364 of Anhui Province","award":["KJ2014ZD31"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["KJ2014ZD31"]}]},{"name":"Key Projects of Natural Science Research in Anhui Colleges and Universities","award":["KJ2018A0448, KJ2018A0449"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["KJ2018A0448, KJ2018A0449"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging as a new communication paradigm and has attracted a significant amount of attention from both academic and engineering communities. In this paper, we consider an IoT market where three roles exist: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), two service providers (SPs) and end users. The WSNs are responsible for sensing and providing data to the two SPs. Based on the sensed data from WSNs, the two SPs compete to provide services to the end users. We model the relationship between the two SPs and end users as a two-stage Stackelberg game, where the two SPs set the prices for their services firstly, and then the end users decide which SP to choose. Specifically, we consider two price-competition scenarios of the two SPs, which are engaged in two games, one is a noncooperative strategic game (NSG) where the two SPs set the prices for services simultaneously, the other is a Stackelberg game (SG) where SP1 who sets the price first is the leader and SP2 who sets the price after is the follower. Each user decides whether and which SP to purchase services from based on prices and service rates. An equilibrium is achieved in each of the two scenarios. Numerical results are conducted to verify our theoretical analysis.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s18124422","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,12,14]],"date-time":"2018-12-14T04:44:42Z","timestamp":1544762682000},"page":"4422","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["Duopoly Price Competition in Wireless Sensor Network-Based Service Provision"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"given":"Xianwei","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Engineering, Suzhou University, Suzhou 234000, China"},{"name":"Global Information and Telecommunication Institute, Waseda University, Tokyo 169-0051, Japan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5829-6850","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Liang","family":"Zhao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science, Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3344-4463","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zhenyu","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0556-2769","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bo","family":"Gu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Guolong","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Engineering, Suzhou University, Suzhou 234000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Fanyong","family":"Cheng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Information Processing and Intelligent Control, Minjiang University, Fuzhou 350108, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Haiyang","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Environment and Geomatics Engineering, Suzhou University, Suzhou 234000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,12,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1497","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2012.02.016","article-title":"Internet of things: Vision, applications and research challenges","volume":"10","author":"Miorandi","year":"2012","journal-title":"Ad Hoc Netw."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"15787","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2815039","article-title":"A services routing based caching scheme for cloud assisted CRNs","volume":"6","author":"Huang","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"225","DOI":"10.1109\/TPDS.2015.2388482","article-title":"Joint optimization of lifetime and transport delay under reliability constraint wireless sensor networks","volume":"9","author":"Dong","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. 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