Distributed Resource Allocation in Cloud-Based Wireless Multimedia Social Networks

With the rapid penetration of mobile devices, more users prefer to watch multimedia live-streaming via their mobile terminals. Quality of service provision is normally a critical challenge in such multimedia sharing environments. In this article, we propose a new cloud-based WMSN to efficiently deal with multimedia sharing and distribution. We first motivate the use of cloud computing and social contexts in sharing live streaming. Then our WMSN architecture is presented with the description of the different components of the network. After that, we focus on distributed resource management and formulate the bandwidth allocation problem in a game-theoretical framework that is further implemented in a distributed manner. In addition, we note the potential selfish behavior of mobile users for resource competition and propose a cheat-proof mechanism to motivate mobile users to share bandwidth. Illustrative results demonstrate the best responses of different users in the game equilibrium as well as the effectiveness of the proposed cheating avoidance scheme.