A Stackelberg Game Based Task Offloading Mechanism for ad-hoc Based Mobile Cloud Computing

Despite of the increasing usage of traditional cloud computing, are still some issues unsolved due to inherent problems of cloud computing, such as long latency and lack of mobility support. The development of mobile cloud computing shows that utilizing the unused resources of mobile devices nearby can achieve better overall system performance. As the surrounding devices are in general have limited computation resources and battery life, they may be selfish to share their resource. To solve this selfish problem, we designed a cooperation enhancement model based on Stackelberg game for ad-hoc based mobile cloud computing. First, we discussed the key elements in task offloading progress and the appropriate procedure to employ an incentive mechanism. Second, we analyzed the profits of all the devices and formulated a model based on Stackelberg game, which taken devices' states and efforts into consideration. Then, we analyzed the model and concluded that there exists a unique Stackelberg equilibrium. Furthermore, we designed a ternary search based algorithm to reach the equilibrium which can maximize the pure profit for both the task publisher and participants. Finally, we conducted simulations to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results show that our incentive mechanism can enhance the cooperation among the mobile devices, improve their profits and promote the task to be quickly completed.