Fog Computing Service Provision Using Bargaining Solutions

To meet the needs of many IoT applications with low-latency requirement, fog computing has been proposed for next-generation mobile networks to migrate the computing from the cloud to the edge of the network. In this paper, we study the fog computing service deployment problem, where the operator allocates and deploys the required computing and network resources on the edge of the network to accommodate the requests of various applications operated by the application service providers (ASPs). The operator negotiates with the ASPs to determine serving QoS of applications and how much to pay. A queuing-based latency performance model with bulk arrival is proposed for the problem to estimate the resources needed for the fog network to achieve the QoS requirements of applications. We then model and analyze the interactions between the operator and multiple ASPs as sequential one-to-many bargaining using Nash bargaining. Next, to find the optimal bargaining sequence, we propose an improved optimal algorithm, along with fast heuristic algorithms, to find the optimal sequence with low complexity. Through extensive simulations, we show that the fog service can benefit all parties, and the proposed optimal and heuristic algorithms can improve the OP's payoff by averages of 21.24 and 14.16 percent respectively.