We consider a resource allocation model with multiple MEC servers and multiple users. We model the resource allocation process between M MEC servers and N users as a trading market, where the MEC servers act as sellers and the users act as buyers. There is an agent hired by MEC servers to manage this market and distribute the computation resources to users.

A system model of resources trading market with multiple MEC servers and two types of users.

Technology Overview
New modeling: We propose a hybrid pricing scheme with futures market and spot market for MEC system.
User diversity: We consider two different types of users: contract users and random users.
Multiple information scenarios: We analyze the optimal solutions under complete information and incomplete information.
Performance analysis: There exist optimal values of asking price and registration fee to maximize utility.

Applications & Benefits
We designed optimal contracts and auction algorithms to obtain the solutions under two different information scenarios: complete information and incomplete information.

Abstract：
In order to deal with the problem of user diversity in Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) resource trading market, in this paper, we propose a hybrid market-based resource transaction mechanism consisting of futures market and spot market. Two different types of users have been taken into consideration. One is registered users and another is unregistered users. In futures market, registered users pay a registration fee to the agent and use the reserved resources according to the contract signed exclusively. We design optimal contracts for the registered users by adjusting the registration fee in order to maximize the servers’ utility. In spot market, unregistered users compete with one another to purchase the resources on demand. We model the trading process as a multi-seller and multi-buyer market, and propose auction algorithms to match the asking price from servers and the bidding price from unregistered users by assigning computation resources to the users. The agent acts as the auctioneer to host the auction, and the unregistered users bid on computation resources based on the estimated valuation. We study the optimal solution under both complete and incomplete information scenarios, depending on whether the agent can observe the users’ private information. Simulation results demonstrate the existences of the asking price and registration fee for the servers to maximize utility.

Hybrid market-based resources allocation in Mobile Edge Computing systems under stochastic information
Author：Xiaowen Huang, Shimin Gong, Jingmin Yang, Wenjie Zhang, Liwei Yang, Chai Kiat Yeo
Year：2022
Source publication：Future Generation Computer Systems Volume 127, February 2022, Pages 80-91
Subfield Highest percentage：99%    Hardware and Architecture   #2/167

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X2100337X