Incentive-Vacation Queueing for Edge Crowd Computing

Edge computing aims to push services closer to endusers, greatly enhancing latency and scale. Yet, there’s untapped potential beyond the network’s last mile, on the extreme edge. Extreme edge computing (XEC) is a computing paradigm that exploits computational resources in the end-user’s immediate vicinity. Edge crowd computing (ECC) is an orchestrated sharing economy model within XEC that uses idle resources on userowned devices for service provision, compensating owners. We analyze an orchestrated ECC where devices rent resources in exchange for incentives. Our incentive-vacation queueing (IVQ) model associates performance with incentive payments using vacation queueing, considering the multitenancy of devices through a server vacation dependent on incentives received. In this article, we offer a framework for analyzing any sharing economy system that can be modeled using IVQ. We discuss the relationship between incentives and vacations on performance, namely, the incentive-vacation or IVQ function. We examine two families of IVQ functions that can be adjusted to benefit either the orchestrator or the worker and introduce a performance metric for such preference. We derive analytical expressions for system performance that consider the random nature of worker devices’ availability due to fluctuating incentives. The IVQ model explores commodifying user-owned resources in an ECC system, presenting a general approach for performance analysis in such environments.