Coalition Game-Based Computation Resource Allocation for Wireless Blockchain Networks

Public blockchain network (PBN) has been widely used in wired networks such as bitcoin network, in which proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm is deployed among miners to reach consensus on users data during the mining process. However, the PoW consensus mechanism is computation-consuming which obstacles the application of PBN in wireless mobile networks since most Internet of Things/mobile devices (IMDs) are resource limited. Recently, mobile edge computing (MEC) has been regarded as a promising technology which can allow IMDs to offload their computation tasks to the edge nodes. Although IMDs can offload their computation tasks to the edge nodes, there is still lots of competition among enormous solo mining IMDs when reaching consensus. In this paper, we first formulate the computation resource allocation problem of PBN from the viewpoint of coalition game theory under the MEC environment. Then, we propose a coalition formation game-based algorithm to maximize the system sum utility and take both the individual profit of IMD and coalition profit into consideration. Furthermore, we prove the proposed algorithm converges to a Nash-stable partition in a fast convergence rate and finally reaches the near-optimal solution with low computational complexity. The simulation results demonstrate the optimality and convergence of the proposed algorithm, and the proposed algorithm outperforms other schemes in terms of system sum profit and ratio of rewarded IMDs to overall IMDs.