On a conjecture on Romanoff type representations

Let $r_1,\dots ,r_t$ be positive integers, and let $\mathcal{A}$ be the set of integers of the form $2^{k_1^{r_1}}+\cdots +2^{k_t^{r_t}}$, where $k_1,\dots ,k_t$ are positive integers. For any positive integer $n$, let $r(n)$ be the number of representations $n=p+a$ with $p$ an odd prime and $a\in \mathcal{A}$. We prove that if $r_1^{-1}+\cdots +r_t^{-1}=1$, then, for every fixed positive integer $m$, the set of integers $n$ with $r(n)\ge m$ has positive lower asymptotic density. In particular, this confirms a conjecture of Chen.