Stackelberg Game for Resource Sharing in Mobile Cloud Workflow Management Via a Direct Approach

Mobile cloud computing(MCC) is a promising technology that fully utilizing the idle resources of mobile devices to improve the system performance. But the devices are self-interested and rational, they may be unwilling to share their resources with the devices of which workflows can not be processed immediately due to constrained resources. To address this problem, a Stackelberg game is formulated between the demanding users and supplier for MCC, which is a direct method rather than one that needs a broker or auctioneer in the previous works. First, we give the system model in which the satisfaction function is first considered in MCC. Next, the Stackelberg game is analysed and it is proved that there exists a unique equilibrium. From the perspectives of fairness and profit, separately, incentive mechanisms of uniform pricing and nonuniform pricing strategies for supplier are adopted, respectively. Finally, simulation results validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and demonstrate the non-uniform pricing outperforms the uniform pricing scheme. The effects of changing system parameters on the system performance are also shown.