A Game Theoretical-based Competitive Incentive Mobile Caching in Internet of Vehicles

Nowadays, there is significant growth in mobile data traffic, mostly due to the explosion in demand for high-bandwidth applications. This increased traffic volume threatens to saturate the backhaul links between the access network and the core network. Edge caching has been proposed as an innovative solution to this problem, by moving popular content near the end-users to reduce access/ downloading delays and relieve backhaul pressure. Most existing caching solutions propose to store the popular contents in edge caches deployed on cellular base stations. In this paper, we study an incentive caching policy in the context of the Internet of vehicles. To this end, we consider a market consisting of several content providers (CPs) that own a set of popular files and wish to bring them closer to their end-users. Besides, at several Public Transportation Companies (PTCs) that own embedded caches on their mobile vehicles. The PTCs offer to lease their on-board cache storage space to the CPs to monetize the caches and earn monetary profit. In our caching policy, CPs and PTCs interact and cooperate to improve the performance of the caching process. We formulated this strategic interaction using a Stackelberg game with multiple leaders (PTCs) and multiple followers (CPs) and derive optimal strategies. To validate and prove the effectiveness of the proposed model, several simulations have been performed. The obtained results showed that our Stackelberg game-based model allows CPs and PTCs to reach optimal utilities in a more efficient caching process.