Combinatorial Auction-Based Fog Service Allocation Mechanism for IoT Applications

The resource allocation and pricing mechanism in fog computing is a reputed problem in the last two decades. The fog service provider plays a major significant role in providing resources to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices (e.g., smart/android cell phones) to the users to deploy their applications on various platforms anywhere anytime. Therefore, the fog users have problem-related resource allocation as well as management in receiving the guaranteed computing resources on specified time. In this article, we propose two types of truthful mechanisms for resource allocation and pricing, viz., (a) Fixed Price based Fog Node Allocation Mechanism (FixP - FogNA) and (b) Combinatorial Auction based Fog Service Allocation Mechanism (CAuc - FogSA). After that, we provide the comparison between the two algorithms, and determine the best algorithm between these two. We further investigate that the combinatorial auction based mechanism can essentially enhance the allocation of the resources with high proficiency and creating higher income for the fog providers. Finally, our study is highly useful in various applications such as doctor-patient allocation, drug-disease connectivity, network broadcasting, and many more.