An Online Pricing Strategy of EV Charging and Data Caching in Highway Service Stations

With the technical advancement of transportation electrification and Internet of vehicle, an increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs) and related infrastructures (e.g., service stations with both charging and communication services) are deployed in the intelligent highway systems. Not only can EVs enter the service station areas for charging, but they can also upload/download cached data at service stations to access multiple networking services. However, as EVs are operated individually with their unique travelling patterns, questions arise as how to incent EVs so that both energy and communication resources are optimally allocated. In this paper, we propose an online pricing mechanism of EV charging and data caching for service stations along the highway. First, we design an online reservation system at each EV to decide the best service station to park when the EV enters the highway. Furthermore, based on the variant power system status, an online pricing mechanism is devised to update the charging and caching price based on Q-learning, by which EVs can be motivated to arrive at the designated station for services. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in improving the station’s utility.