Computation Offloading for Integrated Satellite-Terrestrial Internet of Vehicles in 6G Edge Network: A Cooperative Stackelberg Game

With the development of Internet of Vehicles (IOV) technology, minimizing network latency while performing computationally intensive tasks has become a challenge. As the most advanced data communication technology, 6G can significantly reduce the latency. Additionally, utilizing remote satellites for assistance can alleviate the computational pressure. In this paper, an Integrated Satellite-Terrestrial Internet of Vehicles (IST-IOV) environment was established with 6G networks. Firstly, we established the Edge Computation Service Provider (ECSP) to manage task allocation and data flow. Secondly, considering energy consumption, latency, and offloading process, we define utility values for vehicles and ECSP, construct a Stackelberg bi-level dynamic cooperative game. The existence of the unique Nash equilibrium in the game has also been proved by backward induction methods. Finally, based on the interaction between vehicles and ECSP, we proposed a computation offloading algorithm called Dynamic Cooperative Game Theory in IOV (DCGT-IOV). The DCGT-IOV algorithm can find the optimal offloading strategy for vehicles and the optimal pricing strategy for ECSP based on the gradient of the utility function. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves higher overall utility in various scenarios compared with other strategies and exhibits good convergence properties.