A game-theoretic approach to computation offloading in mobile cloud computing

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cardellini, Valeria; Persone, Vittoria De Nitto; Di Valerio, Valerio; Facchinei, Francisco; Grassi, Vincenzo; Lo Presti, Francesco; Piccialli, Veronica
• 署名单位: University of Rome Tor Vergata; Sapienza University Rome; Sapienza University Rome
• 刊物名称: MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-5610
• DOI: 10.1007/s10107-015-0881-6
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 421-449
• 关键词: algorithms

摘要

We consider a three-tier architecture for mobile and pervasive computing scenarios, consisting of a local tier of mobile nodes, a middle tier (cloudlets) of nearby computing nodes, typically located at the mobile nodes access points but characterized by a limited amount of resources, and a remote tier of distant cloud servers, which have practically infinite resources. This architecture has been proposed to get the benefits of computation offloading from mobile nodes to external servers while limiting the use of distant servers whose higher latency could negatively impact the user experience. For this architecture, we consider a usage scenario where no central authority exists and multiple non-cooperative mobile users share the limited computing resources of a close-by cloudlet and can selfishly decide to send their computations to any of the three tiers. We define a model to capture the users interaction and to investigate the effects of computation offloading on the users' perceived performance. We formulate the problem as a generalized Nash equilibrium problem and show existence of an equilibrium. We present a distributed algorithm for the computation of an equilibrium which is tailored to the problem structure and is based on an in-depth analysis of the underlying equilibrium problem. Through numerical examples, we illustrate its behavior and the characteristics of the achieved equilibria.