Joint Management of Compute and Radio Resources in Mobile Edge Computing: a Market Equilibrium Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a market-based resource allocation framework for mobile edge computing that balances fairness and efficiency by jointly managing radio and computing resources through convex programming.

Contribution

It proposes a novel market equilibrium approach for joint resource management in MEC, ensuring fair and efficient allocation of heterogeneous resources under budget constraints.

Findings

The market equilibrium maximizes fairness among service providers.

The approach balances fairness and efficiency theoretically.

Simulations confirm the effectiveness and properties of the proposed mechanisms.

Abstract

Edge computing has been recently introduced as a way to bring computational capabilities closer to end users of modern network-based services, in order to support existent and future delay-sensitive applications by effectively addressing the high propagation delay issue that affects cloud computing. However, the problem of efficiently and fairly manage the system resources presents particular challenges due to the limited capacity of both edge nodes and wireless access networks, as well as the heterogeneity of resources and services' requirements. To this end, we propose a techno-economic market where service providers act as buyers, securing both radio and computing resources for the execution of their associated end users' jobs, while being constrained by a budget limit. We design an allocation mechanism that employs convex programming in order to find the unique market equilibrium point that maximizes fairness, while making sure that all buyers receive their preferred resource bundle. Additionally, we derive theoretical properties that confirm how the market equilibrium approach strikes a balance between fairness and efficiency. We also propose alternative allocation mechanisms and give a comparison with the market-based mechanism. Finally, we conduct simulations in order to numerically analyze and compare the performance of the mechanisms and confirm the theoretical properties of the market model.