Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computer Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet

A game-theoretic joint optimal pricing and resource allocation for Mobile

Edge Computing in NOMA-based 5G networks and beyond
Razie Roostaei, Zahra Dabiri, Zeinab Movahedi ∗
School of Computer Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Mobile Edge Computing is a new computing paradigm that offers cloud computation capabilities at the edge
Mobile Edge Computing of the mobile network. Due to the proximity to Mobile Users (MUs), the edge cloud can be accessed with low
Offloading latency by resource-limited mobile devices with the aim of extending their capabilities through computation
Pricing
offloading. Despite its unique features, the efficiency of offloading is highly influenced by the purchasing
Resource allocation
power of MUs as well as the competition arisen to access both limited communication and computation
Game theory
resources. However, since the MUs’ demands for these resources change dynamically, the pricing approaches
should be capable of adapting in real-world scenarios. To address the aforementioned challenges, we propose
a game-based distributed scheme to jointly and dynamically allocate and price resources required for proper
offloading in a two-tier NOMA-based mobile system. To this end, we consider the incentives of both the
edge provider and MUs as well as conflicts arising from their interactions. Under the proposed scheme,
MUs should pay not only based on the given resources but also based on their transmission power level
as a punishment for their produced interference. We formulate the interactions among the monopolist edge
provider and MUs using the Stackelberg game. Further, the power allocation in NOMA and the competition
of MUs over computation resources are modeled using game theory and shown admitting the potential and
the weakly coupled constraint game, respectively. Furthermore, we prove the existence and uniqueness of the
equilibrium of both corresponding games and calculate it for both the edge provider and MUs. Simulation
results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach in terms of the utility of MUs and the edge
provider, average allocated communication and computation resources, optimal pricing, and the number of
rejected MUs under different purchasing power.

1. Introduction simultaneously serves multiple users in the same degrees of freedom by

In the Fifth Generation mobile networks (5G), Mobile Edge Comput-
ing (MEC) is served as a promising solution to enable mobile devices
(MDs) to offload their computation-intensive applications to the edge
of mobile networks with low access latency. Moreover, since the in-
terference in todays’ networks tends to increase due to the increasing
number of connected MDs as well as MUs’ demands, 5G deploys widely
micro-cells to offload the traffic of proximate MDs to the micro-cell
Base Station (mBS). This latter does not only reduce the interference
due to low transmission power of MDs associated to micro-cells, it also
increases the system capacity and network coverage. In such a context,
shared-spectrum approaches are adopted to increase the spectrum reuse
and satisfy increasing resource demands. However, due to co-channel
deployment of micro-cells with macro-cell, the incurred co-tier and
cross-tier interference are still serious. To reduce the interference in
the network and improve the throughput of MDs, Power Domain Non-
orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique is widely adopted which
splitting them in the power domain. Consequently, the system capacity
of future wireless communication systems and the incurred interference
are significantly improved [1–3].
1.1. Problem statement
Despite the unique features of MEC in NOMA-based 5G networks
and beyond, its efficiency may be still challenged in high demand
scenarios with insufficient communication and computation resources.
In such a situation, the obtained Quality of Service (QoS) is bounded by
the amount of allocated computation resources and received through-
put, which depends on the interference. Moreover, due to limited
communication and computation resources, a competition is arisen
between MUs to access these limited resources in exchange for a certain
price. The unit price of these resources has a key impact on the MUs’

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zmovahedi@iust.ac.ir (Z. Movahedi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2021.108352
Received 2 February 2021; Received in revised form 30 June 2021; Accepted 19 July 2021
Available online 30 July 2021
1389-1286/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
R. Roostaei et al.
demands for communication and computation resources, pushing each
MU to consider a tradeoff between the offloading efficiency and money
saving. In return, since the MUs’ purchase or not and the amount of
purchasing may reduce as the resources’ unit price increases, the edge
provider tends to increase its revenue by offering a proper unit price
taking into account the effect of its pricing strategy on the purchase of
MUs. Consequently, the edge provider should design a dynamic pricing
mechanism to keep a balance between the unit price and the MUs’
purchase.
1.2. Existing solutions and remaining issues
To address the aforementioned open issues, a number of recent
works focused on resource management or pricing mechanism in the
context of MEC. Due to the increasing number of MUs and the scala-
bility issue as well as controlling and signaling overhead of complex
centralized management, most of existing works [4–14] are based on
game theory as a widely adopted mathematical tool for designing,
modeling and analyzing distributed mechanisms with low complexity.
However, most of the existing works do not consider the simultaneous
management of both communication and computation resources, fo-
cusing only either on the management of communication resources [5,
15–19] or computation resources [4,6,7,9,13,14,20] with or without
considering a pricing mechanism. Moreover, Refs. [5,9,16–21] make
the offloading decision assuming an infinite amount of computing
resources available at the edge cloud. However, due to limited capa-
bilities of MEC servers in real world, these approaches suffer from the
degradation of MUs’ satisfaction in practice.
Besides the aforementioned uni-dimensional works in the context
of resource management, researches [8,10–12,22,23] addressed the
management of both communication and computation resources simul-
taneously. However, most of these works have neglected the effect of
MUs’ payment for given resources, which is of great importance in
real environments. To address this shortcoming, Refs. [4–8,10,11,13,
14,17,18,20,21] adopted different pricing mechanisms in the process of
offloading decision. However, from the above list, only a few number
of works [8,10,11] focused also on communication and computation
resource allocation in addition to pricing mechanism. Nevertheless, [8,
10] laid emphasis on the fixed pricing and did not take each MUs’ de-
mands into account. Further, the issue of simultaneously optimizing the
goals of MUs and the edge provider is not addressed in the mentioned
related works. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, none of the
existing works considered the cross-tier interference neither under the
NOMA nor any other transmission systems.
1.3. Contributions
To address the aforementioned challenges, we propose a game-
theoretic joint optimal pricing and resource allocation algorithm. Dif-
ferent from the existing works that either rely on optimizing the goals of
MUs or the edge provider, the proposed algorithm takes into account
the revenue of the edge provider, as well as the utility and purchas-
ing power of MUs in a NOMA-based two-tier architecture. Moreover,
we considered the cross-tier interference which was neglected in all
previous works. Furthermore, the proposed approach studies joint com-
putation offloading, communication and computation resource allo-
cation, and dynamic pricing mechanism. The proposed approach is
characterized by its distributed nature, scalability, low decision and
communication overhead, offloading energy efficiency, high data rate,
low interference, and optimal dynamic pricing, along with optimal
communication and computation resource allocation. Moreover, we
carry out extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of our
proposals under various scenarios with the different purchasing power
of MUs. Evaluation results showed that the proposed approach allows
for optimal pricing while the utility of MUs and the edge provider, the
number of rejected MUs, and the average allocated communication and
2
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
computation resources are significantly improved independently of the
scenario used. The main contributions of this paper are summarized as
follows:
1. We propose a game-based distributed algorithm that efficiently
handles the MUs’ competition for communication and MEC’s
finite computation resources while taking the payment into ac-
count. In this regard, we model the edge provider and MUs as
players in a two-stage single-leader multi-follower Stackelberg
game. Furthermore, the interaction among MUs for accessing
communication and computation resources is modeled as two
non-cooperative games at the follower level, proving that they
admit a potential and a Weakly Coupled Constrained Game
(WCCG), respectively.
2. We consider both co-tier and cross-tier interference as well as
a punishment mechanism in terms of monetary cost to control
the transmission power of MUs. Further, we consider the NOMA
transmission system due to its spectrum efficiency, low trans-
mission latency, high cell-edge throughput, and relaxed channel
feedback [1].
3. We show that the single-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game
leads to a unique Stackelberg equilibrium between edge provider
and MUs, as well as to a unique Subgame Perfect Equilibrium
(SPE) among all MUs. Moreover, we calculate the SPE of the
game.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents an
overview of the related work. Sections 3 and 4 introduce the system
model and problem formulation, respectively. In Section 5, we derive
the game formulation, describing the MUs and the edge provider’s
strategy. Moreover, we study the unique SPE of the game and compute
the optimal unit price for communication and computation resources,
as well as the optimal amount of both resources for individual MUs.
Section 6 presents the evaluation settings and obtained results. Fi-
nally, Section 7 concludes the paper and outlines our future research
directions.
2. Related work
Due to the prominent role of MEC in removing barriers on the
way of computing, a growing number of researches overviewed MEC
and its potential performance benefits [24–30]. Besides, a significant
body of works focused on the management of communication and/or
computation resources or proposing a pricing mechanism in the context
of MEC. In the following, we first describe existing works focusing on
the management of communication, computation, and both resources,
respectively. Then, we report existing pricing approaches for communi-
cation or/and computation resources. Finally, we overview works ad-
dressing the joint problem of pricing and allocation of communication
and computation resources.
Among the state-of-the-art, a number of works have addressed only
the management of communication resources, with or without consid-
ering the pricing problem [5,15–19]. In [5], the authors proposed a
Stackelberg-based dynamic allocation algorithm to optimally allocate
the total available bandwidth of cloud server to different MDs based
on their offered service classes (audio/data/video stream). In [15],
the authors formulated the problem of communication resource allo-
cation as mixed-integer linear programming, which is then converted
into a matching problem and solved using a modified Kuhn–Munkres
algorithm. In [16], the authors modeled the problem of communica-
tion resource allocation as a fair Nash bargaining resource allocation
game and adopted the time-sharing variable to obtain the near-optimal
bargaining resource allocation strategy. Similarly, in [18], the authors
addressed the joint problem of mobile edge computation offloading and
transmission scheduling for delay-sensitive applications. The aforemen-
tioned works do not only suffer from their unawareness or assumption
R. Roostaei et al.
of the infinity of computation resources, but they also neglect the cross-
tier interference, which can lead to significant degradation of the QoS.
In addition, in comparison to our paper, none of these works considered
the NOMA transmission system.
Besides the aforementioned works focusing only on the communica-
tion resource allocation, some other works have mainly emphasized on
the computation resource allocation [4,6,7,9,13,14,20]. Particularly,
the objective of [6] was to maximize the resource utilization of the
edge provider while allocating the computation resources optimally to
the MUs. Moreover, the equilibrium is computed centrally by solving
the Eisenberg–Gale convex program. In [9], the authors proposed a
computation offloading optimization, which aims at minimizing the
task execution time and energy consumption. The main issue of the
aforementioned works relies on their unawareness of limited communi-
cation resources, which can lead to the degradation of the experienced
QoS in practice.
In addition to the aforementioned works, which considered either
communication or computation resources, some other works addressed
the allocation of both of these resources simultaneously [8,10–12,22,
23,31]. However, to the best of our knowledge, all existing works
considered the Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA) as their transmission
system. For instance, the work presented in [8] modeled the allocation
of communication and computation resources as a multi-user computa-
tion offloading pricing game, where each player behaves more socially
as a result of the proposed punishment mechanism. In [10], the authors
proposed an offloading decision strategy along with a solution for the
management of communication and computation resources. In [11],
the authors proposed an operator-oriented mechanism for simultaneous
management of communication and computation resources and derived
the optimal amount of resources that minimizes the resource occupancy
and satisfies the delay constraint. In [12] and [31], the joint problem of
task offloading to MEC servers and allocation of both communication
and computation resources was investigated. The ultimate objective
is to maximize the MUs’ task offloading gain modeled as a weighted
sum of the amount of reduction in task completion time and energy
consumption.
Against the aforementioned studies concentrating on OMA for com-
munication resource allocation, a few works have exploited the in-
tegration of edge computing and NOMA as a promising transmission
system to maximize the capacity and throughput of the network [22,
23]. In [22], the authors proposed a MEC-aware NOMA framework to
reduce MUs’ uplink energy consumption. In [23], the joint offloading
decision and resource allocation under NOMA is formulated as an opti-
mization problem that aims at minimizing the total system cost in terms
of energy and the MUs’ latency. Regardless of the utilization or not
of the NOMA transmission system, none of the aforementioned studies
handled the cross-tier interference, which can be very significant in
future networks.
Besides the overviewed researches focusing on resource manage-
ment, several studies have been recently conducted to provide the pric-
ing schemes for communication and/or computation resources [4–8,10,
11,13,14,17,18,20,21]. In [4], the authors proposed bid-proportional
allocation, uniform pricing, and fairness-seeking differentiated pricing
as three dynamic joint pricing and computation resource allocation
mechanisms. Moreover, in [7] and [14] the authors proposed a uniform
pricing scheme for a single-cloud multi-user MEC system. They modeled
the issue of pricing the computation resources as the Stackelberg game
among the MUs and the edge provider and determined an optimal unit
price to maximize the edge provider’s revenue. In [13], the authors
used the Stackelberg game to formulate the problem of computation
resource pricing in a context where MUs run blockchain applications
via the edge cloud to mine their blocks. Furthermore, the authors
of [21] suggested an algorithm to find the Nash equilibrium among
MUs based on the transmission time, energy consumption, as well as
the price of cloud resources under the fixed price policy.
3
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
Fig. 1. Proposed system model.
Although the works presented above have addressed the pricing
issue, a few numbers of them focused on communication and computa-
tion resource allocation in addition to the pricing mechanism [8,10,11].
In this regard, the works introduced in [8,10] considered a fixed pricing
approach without taking the demands of each MUs into consideration.
Consequently, these works suffer from the incapability of some MUs to
afford the given price.
To summarize, except the paper [11], none of the above works
have provided a comprehensive approach considering the joint problem
of dynamic pricing and allocation of communication and computation
resources. Moreover, the existing works have neglected the cross-tier
interference, which is of great impact on the throughput of users and
their experienced QoS. Furthermore, none of the aforementioned works
considered NOMA as the transmission model enabling the spectrum
efficiency along with the high throughput and low latency. Further,
the issue of simultaneously optimizing the goals of MUs and the edge
provider is not addressed in the mentioned related works. To address
these open issues, we propose a scalable price-based offloading decision
algorithm that allocates power and computation resources efficiently
and considers the revenue of the edge provider and the utility and
purchasing power of MUs in a NOMA-based two-tier architecture. Our
proposed scheme is capable of obtaining a well-balanced performance
between MUs and the edge provider, as described in the following
sections.
3. System model
As shown in Fig. 1, we consider a two-tier uplink cognitive het-
erogeneous network involving a Macro Base Station (MBS) and a mBS
equipped with edge computation capabilities. The service area of the
mBS is overlaid by the primary MBS, and they operate in a shared sub-
channel frequency band. The total bandwidth of the MBS is divided
into 𝑀 orthogonal sub-channels. The NOMA transmission system is
employed in mBS network. A set of Secondary Users (SUs) located
in the coverage area of the mBS receive interference from both other
secondary users with lower gains and the Primary User (PU) that its
sub-channel is shared with SUs. Thus, MUs compete with each other to
achieve more transmission resources.
Although the mobile network and the edge provider are responsible
for allocating communication and computation resources respectively,
we assume that only one of these providers should take the responsi-
bility of pricing both of these resources. Hence, we consider that the
edge provider is in charge of offering the unit price of communication
and computation resources, considering the fact that the MUs’ demands
and the offered price always move in opposite directions. Consequently,
in such a model, MUs need only to interact directly with the edge
provider in order to buy their required resources. In the following, the
communication and computation models are described in order.
R. Roostaei et al.
3.1. Communication model
We consider a set of 𝑘 ∈ {1, 2, … , 𝐾} single-antenna MDs competing
to get more transmission resources in order to offload their computation
to the edge cloud. In this work, we assume that the MBS/mBS have
perfect channel state information (CSI) and transfer these values to
MDs as in [32]. It is worth mentioning that, if the offloading duration
is much longer than the coherence time, the values of ℎ𝑘,𝑠 , ℎ𝑘,𝑚 and
𝑔𝑃 𝑈 ,𝑠 may vary, which lead 𝐷𝑅𝑘 to fluctuate over time. To handle
such a situation, we assume that the effective rate 𝐷𝑅𝑘 over the whole
duration can be approximated by their average values as in [8,9,33].
Similarly, when the MU channel is in fast fading or the feedback is
limited, it is not easy to obtain the perfect CSI and as a result, the
long-term power allocation with statistical CSI can be used [33].
Based on NOMA decode principle, the SU with the highest channel
gain experiences interference from all other SUs, while the SU with
the lowest channel gain enjoys interference-free transmission effec-
tively [23]. Without loss of generality, the MDs’ channel gains are
assumed to be sorted such that |ℎ1,𝑠 | ≥ |ℎ2,𝑠 | ≥ ⋯ ≥ |ℎ𝐾,𝑠 |, where each
ℎ𝑘,𝑠 denotes the channel gain between the 𝑘th SU and the mBS 𝑠. As a
result, 𝑘th SU receives interference from SUs 𝑘 + 1 to 𝐾. In addition,
𝑘th SU receives interference from PU whose sub-channel is shared with
SUs. Further, let denote the interference link from the PU to the mBS
as 𝑔𝑃 𝑈 ,𝑠 . Moreover, 𝑝𝑘 , and 𝑝𝑃 𝑈 denote the transmit power from 𝑘th
SU to mBS and PU to mBS on associated sub-channel, respectively.
Considering that the term 𝑝𝑃 𝑈 𝑔𝑃 𝑈 ,𝑠 represents the interference that SUs
receive from PU, the uplink data rate of the 𝑘th SU by SIC, denoted as
𝐷𝑅𝑘 , can be calculated as follows (1):
𝑝𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑠
𝐷𝑅𝑘 = 𝐵log2 ( ∑𝐾 ) (1)
𝑘′ =𝑘+1 𝑝𝑘′ ℎ𝑘′ ,𝑠 + 𝑝𝑃 𝑈 𝑔𝑃 𝑈 ,𝑠 + 𝑁0
where, 𝐵 and 𝑁0 stand respectively for the channel bandwidth and the
background noise power, respectively.
3.2. Computation model
We consider the coarse-grain computation offloading in which MUs’
computation can be executed locally or accomplished at the edge
cloud. In the case of offloading at a given proper data rate, MUs
affording their required computation resources obtain higher offloading
efficiency and hence better satisfaction than other MUs. Similar to the
satisfaction function modeled in [34], the satisfaction level of a MU 𝑘
from a given amount of computation resources, denoted as 𝑔(𝑥𝑘 ), can
be modeled by characterizing the difference between the ideal demand
and the actual allocated computation resources. More specifically, if the
actual amount of allocated computation resources is less than the ideal
demand, the MU 𝑘 is not satisfied, and thus 𝑔(𝑥𝑘 ) < 0. The satisfaction
function of MU 𝑘 is modeled as:
𝑥
𝜃𝑘 (1− 𝑑𝑘 )
𝑔(𝑥𝑘 ) = 1 − 𝑒 𝑘 (2)
where, 𝑑𝑘 and 𝑥𝑘 denote respectively the ideal CPU frequency demand
and the actual allocated computation resources of MU 𝑘, respectively.
Moreover, 𝜃𝑘 characterizes the priority of each MU’s computation
offloading, where a larger 𝜃𝑘 indicates that the computation demand
of the MU 𝑘 has a higher priority.
4. Problem formulation
In order to determine the efficiency or not of offloading with a given
amount of communication and computation resources, we consider a
tradeoff between several factors from the perspective of both MUs and
the edge provider. For the MU side, we consider the execution time,
energy consumption, and the price of resources, while the revenue and
the cost of serving offloaded computations are considered from the
perspective of the edge provider. In the following, we formulate the
utility of MUs and the edge provider.
4
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
4.1. Mobile users’ utility
Since the MU’s benefit from offloading is influenced by its profit
gained from both communication and computation resources, the re-
mote utility of MU 𝑘, denoted as 𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 , is calculated as the sum of its
utility from both of these resources. This latter is modeled as follows:
𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 , 𝑝𝑘 , 𝑥𝑘 ) = 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝑝𝑘 ) + 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 (𝜇𝑥 , 𝑥𝑘 ) (3)
where, 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 and 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝
denote respectively the utility of MU from
the perspective of communication and computation resources. Further,
𝜇𝑝 and 𝜇𝑥 signify the communication and computation unit price,
respectively. 𝑝𝑘 and 𝑥𝑘 were already described under the Eqs. (1) and
(2).
In this measure, 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 is modeled considering the MUs’ trend to
execute their computation with minimum latency, power consump-
tion, and payment. Consequently, the first term in 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 is calculated
based on the inverse of delay caused by transmitting the computation
task to the edge cloud (the transmission speed). The second term
(𝛽𝑘 𝑝𝑘 ) indicates the amount of power consumption, and the last term
(𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑝 𝑝𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 ) shows the payment for allocated communication resources
calculated according to a financial penalty to punish the secondary
MUs offloading with high levels of transmission power. In this measure,
the unit price of communication resources (𝜇𝑝 ) is multiplied by the
amount of cross-tier interference between the macro and micro cell tiers
(𝑝𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 ). As MUs tend to get more transmission power to maximize their
bit rate, we consider this punishment mechanism to manage destructive
interference on primary MU. More explicitly, 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 can be obtained as
follows:
𝐵 𝑝𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑠
𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝑝) = log2 ( ∑𝐾 )
𝑡𝑘 𝑝 ℎ +𝑝𝑃 𝑈 𝑔𝑃 𝑈 ,𝑠 +𝑁0
𝑘 =𝑘+1 𝑘′ 𝑘′ ,𝑠
′ (4)
−𝛽𝑘 𝑝𝑘 − 𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑝 (𝑝𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 )
where, 𝛼𝑘 and 𝛽𝑘 are unit converter coefficients and 𝑡𝑘 is the size of
computation task of MD 𝑘 expressed in number of bits. Moreover, ℎ𝑘,𝑚
is the channel gain between the MD 𝑘 and the MBS 𝑚. As expressed in
the last term, the financial penalty is proportional to the transmission
power and calculated according to the uniform pricing scheme which
consists in charging all MUs equally per unit of allocated resources.
The computation utility of MU 𝑘 is formulated based on the execu-
tion speed, the satisfaction level, and payment. Similar to [35], the first
term in (5) indicates the inverse delay of the task execution in the edge
cloud. The second term shows its satisfaction level calculated according
to Eq. (2). The third term denotes payment calculated uniformly for
computation resources. Consequently, the 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 is expressed as follows:
𝑥
𝑥𝑘 𝜃 (1− 𝑘 )
𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 (𝜇𝑥 , 𝑥) = + 𝛺𝑘 (1 − 𝑒 𝑘 𝑑𝑘 ) − 𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 𝑥𝑘 (5)
𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘
where, 𝑐𝑘 represents the number of required CPU cycles per bit which
depends on the application and 𝛺𝑘 is a unit converter coefficient. From
𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 , we can define its objective function as follows:
max 𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 , 𝑝𝑘 , 𝑥𝑘 )
𝑝𝑘 ,𝑥𝑘
s.t. 𝑝𝑘 ∈ [p𝑘 , 𝑝̄𝑘 ]
¯ (6)
𝑥𝑘 ∈ [x𝑘 , 𝑥̄ 𝑘 ]
¯
∑𝐾
𝑥𝑘 ≤ 𝑋𝑡ℎ
𝑘=1
where, the first two constraints indicate the feasible range for com-
munication and computation resources demands. Moreover, the third
term indicates that the total computation resources allocated to all MUs
cannot exceed the total resources of the edge server.
Although MUs are most of time willing to execute their computation
remotely, MUs who cannot afford to pay the offered price may decide
to execute their computation locally. For such MUs, the utility of local
execution can be calculated as follows:
𝑈𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 = 𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 (0, 0, 0, 0) − 𝐶𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 (7)
R. Roostaei et al. Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

in which, 5.1. MUs’ (followers’) strategy in stage II

𝑓 𝑙𝑜𝑐
𝜃𝑘 (1− 𝑑𝑘 ) 𝑓𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐
𝐶𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 = 𝛺𝑘 (1 − 𝑒 𝑘 )− + 𝛽𝑘 𝛿𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 (8) As mentioned before, we model the interaction among MUs as
𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 and 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 . We show that 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 admits a decoupled potential
where, 𝑓𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 is the local CPU frequency, and 𝛿𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 is the power consump- game, which can reach at least a Nash equilibrium with the finite
tion of the MD 𝑘. Other parameters are similar to previous equations. improvements property.

4.2. Edge provider’s utility Definition 2. As stated in [37], a decoupled potential game is a kind
of potential game, in which each MU’s strategy 𝑠𝑖 is not a function of
The objective of the edge provider is to optimize its utility by maxi- other MUs’ strategies.
mizing its revenue and minimizing its corresponding costs of electricity, 𝐵𝑅𝑖 (𝑠𝑖 , 𝑠−𝑖 ) = 𝐵𝑅𝑖 (𝑠𝑖 , 𝑠−𝑖 ) = 𝐵𝑅𝑖 (𝑠𝑖 )
maintenance, and capital and operational expenditures (CAPEX and (11)
OPEX). We can derive the edge provider’s revenue based on the total ∀𝑠𝑖 ∈ 𝑆𝑖 , 𝑠−𝑖 , 𝑠−𝑖 ∈ 𝑆−𝑖 , 𝑖 ∈ 𝐾
amount of communication and computation resources sold to all MUs
multiplied by the unit prices. Consequently, the optimization problem Proposition 1. 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 is a decoupled potential game.
of the edge provider can be defined as follows:
𝜕 2 𝑢𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚
max 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 ) Proof. From (4) we have 𝜕𝑝 𝑘𝜕𝑝 = 0, and hence this game is a potential
𝑘 𝑘′
𝜇𝑝 ,𝜇𝑥
game and at least has one Nash equilibrium as stated in [37].
s.t.𝜇 𝑝 < 𝜇𝑝 < 𝜇̄ 𝑝 (9)
¯ Proposition 2. The Nash equilibrium point of this game is unique.
𝜇 𝑥 < 𝜇𝑥 < 𝜇̄ 𝑥
¯
in which, Proof. To prove that the Nash equilibrium of a game is unique, we
∑
𝐾 should show that the best response of each MU 𝑘 is in a standard
𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 ) = (𝑥𝑘 𝜇𝑥 + 𝑝𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 𝜇𝑝 − 𝑐𝑥 𝑥𝑘 ) form [13]. Since each MU choose 𝑝 from a positive interval, 𝐵𝑅𝑘 (𝑝) > 0
𝑘=1 (10) 𝜕 2 𝑢𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚
for each MU 𝑘 ∈ 𝐾. Moreover, 𝜕𝑝 𝑘𝜕𝑝 = 0 and is not negative, ∀𝑘 ∈ 𝐾.
𝑘 𝑘′
−𝑐𝑝 𝐵 Thus, MU 𝑘’s best response is monotone with respect to the strategy of
where, 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 is the utility of the edge provider and, 𝜇𝑝 and 𝜇𝑥 are other MUs. In order to prove the scalability, we have:
the communication and computation unit prices. Moreover, 𝑐𝑥 and 𝑐𝑝 𝐵 𝜆>1
are the edge provider’s cost per unit of computation and bandwidth, 𝐵𝑅𝑘 (𝜆𝑝) = 𝑡𝑘 𝜆(𝛽𝑘 +𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑝 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 )
< 𝑡 (𝛽 +𝛼𝐵𝜇 ℎ )
𝑘 𝑘 𝑘 𝑝 𝑘,𝑚
respectively. (12)
< 𝑡 (𝛽 +𝛼𝜆𝐵𝜇 ℎ ) = 𝜆𝐵𝑅𝑘 (𝑝)
𝑘 𝑘 𝑘 𝑝 𝑘,𝑚
5. Stackelberg game
→ 𝐵𝑅𝑘 (𝜆𝑝) < 𝜆𝐵𝑅𝑘 (𝑝)

Since MUs pay based on given resources, the proposed system model Therefore, the proof is completed. According to the concavity of MUs’
trades off the offloading efficiency and payments. In order to find utility functions, the unique value for 𝑝∗𝑘 is computed as (13) with the
the optimal amount of computation resources as a function of the aid of the first derivative of each MU’s function.
offered price, we describe the employed single-leader-multi-follower ⎧
Stackelberg game hereafter. ⎪ 0 𝑝𝑘 < p𝑘
⎪ 𝐵
¯
∗ p𝑘 ≤ 𝑝𝑘 ≤ 𝑝̄𝑘
As we are investigating the competitive behavior of MUs, we derive 𝑝𝑘 = ⎨ 𝑡 (𝛽 +𝛼 𝜇 ℎ ) (13)
𝑘 𝑘 𝑘 𝑝 𝑘,𝑚
the equilibrium among them as 𝑠𝑜𝑙 = arg max𝑘∈𝐾 𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 , 𝑝𝑘 , 𝑥𝑘 ). On ⎪ ¯
⎪ 𝑝̄𝑘 𝑝𝑘 > 𝑝̄𝑘
the other hand, the edge provider can choose an optimal service price ⎩
to maximize its revenue, knowing how the price affects demands of
the MUs. In order to model the interaction between the edge provider Definition 3. As stated in [38], a weakly coupled constrained game is
and the MUs we formulate a two-stage Stackelberg game as 𝐺 = a game, in which the dependency appears in the common constraint to
(𝑁, {𝑎𝑖 }𝑖=1,…,𝑁 , {𝑢𝑖 }𝑖=1,…,𝑁 ). the agents but not in the players’ utility function.
The players of the game (N) are the edge provider (the leader),
and the MUs (the followers). 𝑎𝑘 and 𝑢𝑘 are the strategy set and the Proposition 3. 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 admits the weakly coupled constrained game.
payoff function of player 𝑘, respectively. The strategy of the edge
provider is the unit price while that of the MUs is their demands. Definition 4. Normalized Nash equilibriums are a kind of equilibriums
Here, the edge provider announces its offered unit price before the which are based on pricing mechanism. It means that MUs’ actions will
MUs choose their demands, and hence the MUs are able to observe have a price based on the constraints defining the game [38].
the price strategy of the edge provider. Under equilibrium, the pay-
off of the edge provider and MUs are their utility (𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 ) and Proposition 4. The normalized Nash equilibrium point of this game is
𝑈𝑘𝑟𝑒𝑚 (𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 , 𝑝𝑘 , 𝑥𝑘 )). Furthermore, given the edge’s strategy, each MU unique.
adjusts its decision with respect to the others’ decision. We formu-
late two non-cooperative subgames 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 and 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 between MUs as
Proof. According to [38], since 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 is strictly concave in the strate-
𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 = (𝑁 − 1, {𝑝𝑘 }𝑘=1,…,𝑁−1 , {𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 }𝑘=1,…,𝑁−1 ) and 𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 = (𝑁 −
gies of MU 𝑘, the normalized Nash equilibrium is unique and, in this
1, {𝑥𝑘 }𝑘=1,…,𝑁−1 , {𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 }𝑘=1,…,𝑁−1 ). In the following, we aim at de- paper, we find it in a closed form.
termining the Subgame Perfect Equilibrium (SPE) of the Stackelberg The pricing mechanism is implemented in a decentralized way as
game. we want in our scheme. Thus, the payoff of MU 𝑘 including the pricing
derived by (14), where the price per computation resources is denoted
Definition 1. A strategy profile is a subgame perfect equilibrium by 𝜆𝑘 . At last, 𝜆𝑘 + 𝜇𝑥 is the unit price that the edge provider offers.
if it represents a Nash equilibrium of every subgame of the original 𝑥
𝑥𝑘 𝜃 (1− 𝑘 )
game [36]. 𝐿𝑟𝑒𝑚
𝑘,𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 (𝜇𝑥 , 𝑥) = + 𝛺𝑘 (1 − 𝑒 𝑘 𝑑𝑘 ) − 𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 𝑥𝑘
In order to find the SPE of the Stackelberg game, we first analyze 𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘
(14)
the MUs’ strategies with regard to communication and computation ∑
𝐾

demands given the offered unit price. −𝜆𝑘 ( 𝑥𝑘 − 𝑋𝑡ℎ )

𝑘=1

5
R. Roostaei et al. Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

Table 1 Let 𝑥𝑘 = x𝑘 x and 𝑥𝑘 = 𝑥̄ 𝑘 to find the upper and lower bound of 𝜇𝑥 ,

Parameters settings. ¯ Moreover, since the domain of natural logarithm function
respectively.
Parameter Value Parameter Value is (0, +∞), another lower bound on 𝜇𝑥 is 𝛼1 ( 𝑡 1𝑐 − 𝜆𝑘 ). As a result, we
𝑘 𝑘 𝑘
𝐵 1 (GHz) 𝑁0 0.001 (w)[23] should consider the maximum value of these two calculated terms as
𝑑𝑘,𝑚 [150, 250] 𝑑𝑘,𝑠 [1, 50] (m) [19] the lower bound on 𝜇𝑥 .
( m)
∑
𝐾
𝐵
𝑡𝑘 [50, 600] 𝑐𝑘 [0.5, 1.5]
max 𝜇𝑝 ( ) − 𝑐𝑝 𝐵+
(Mbits) (Kcycle/bit) 𝜇𝑝 ,𝜇𝑥
𝑘=1
𝑡𝑘 (𝛽𝑘 + 𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑝 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 )
[7]
∑
𝐾
𝑑𝑘 𝑑 (𝛼 𝜇 + 𝜆𝑘 − 1∕𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 )
𝑋𝑡ℎ [3000, 4500] [𝑝𝑘 , 𝑝̄𝑘 ] [0.014, 0.3](w) (𝜇𝑥 − 𝑐𝑥 )(𝑑𝑘 − ln( 𝑘 𝑘 𝑥 )))
(GHz) [39] [23] 𝑘=1
𝜃𝑘 𝜃𝑘 𝛺𝑘
𝐾 100 𝛽𝑘 1 1 𝐵 1 𝐵
s.t. 𝜇𝑝 ∈ ∩ [ ( − 𝛽𝑘 ), ( − 𝛽𝑘 )]
𝛼𝑘 [1, 5][7] 𝜃𝑘 [1, 5] 𝛼𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 𝑡𝑘 𝑝̄𝑘
𝑘∈𝐾 𝛼𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚 𝑡𝑘 p𝑘
𝑥̄ ¯
𝑓𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 [30, 40] (GHz) [𝑥𝑘 , 𝑥̄ 𝑘 ] [𝑑𝑘 , 𝑋𝑡ℎ ] 𝜃 (1− 𝑘 )
1 1 𝜃𝑘 𝛺𝑘 𝑒 𝑘 𝑑𝑘
𝑑𝑘 [3, 100] (GHz) 𝛿𝑘𝑙𝑜𝑐 [2−11 , 20−11 ][7] 𝜇𝑥 ∈ ∩ [max{ ( − 𝜆𝑘 ), − 𝜆𝑘
𝑘∈𝐾 𝑘∈𝐾 𝛼𝑘 𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 𝑑𝑘 𝛼𝑘
Number 1000 Confidence 97% x𝑘
𝜃 (1− )
of runs interval
1 𝜃 𝛺 𝑒 𝑘 ¯𝑑𝑘 1
+ }, 𝑘 𝑘 − 𝜆𝑘 + ] (18)
𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 𝛼𝑘 𝑑𝑘 𝛼𝑘 𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 𝛼𝑘
As we know, a solution for (18) needs to satisfy the intersection
The Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) is utilized to find the optimal solution. of 𝐾 bounds, which may be infeasible. In order to deal with this, we
We know that there exists a vector 𝜆, such that a computation resources design an algorithm that allows the edge provider to reject several MUs
vector 𝑥∗ is an equilibrium in the original game only if for each MU 𝑘, to increase the unit price. More specifically, we know that the utility
𝑥∗ maximizes 𝐿. Then, the 𝑘th component of 𝑥∗ would be the solution of the edge provider trades off between the amount of the unit price
of (15), representing in (16). and the number of MUs as its customer. Without loss of generality, we
𝜕𝐿𝑟𝑒𝑚 𝑥∗ suppose that the strategy of the edge provider is as 𝑣 = (𝑎𝑐𝑝, 𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 ),
𝑘,𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 1 𝜃 𝛺 𝜃 (1− 𝑘 )
= + 𝑘 𝑘 𝑒 𝑘 𝑑𝑘 − 𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 − 𝜆𝑘 (15) where 𝑎𝑐𝑝 is the number of accepted MUs. The edge provider should
𝜕𝑥𝑘 𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 𝑑𝑘
adjust 𝜇𝑝 , 𝜇𝑥 , and 𝑎𝑐𝑝 to maximize its revenue. Since 𝜇𝑝 and 𝜇𝑥 are
There exists a unique normalized equilibrium to the original problem chosen from a continuous range, the number of possible solutions is
associated with some 𝜆 as long as there exists a strategy that satisfies huge. Thus, checking all possible solutions is impossible. To tackle this
the constraints [38]. The solution of (15) is as follows: challenge, we proposed an algorithm that sorts MUs based on their
⎧ thresholds on the unit price and gradually increases the unit price until
⎪ 0 𝑥𝑘 < x¯𝑘 the maximum upper bound between MUs. As a result, MUs with lower
⎪ 𝑑 𝑑 (𝛼 𝜇 +𝜆 −1∕𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 )
𝑥∗𝑘 = ⎨ 𝑑𝑘 − 𝜃𝑘 ln( 𝑘 𝑘 𝑥𝜃 𝛺𝑘 ) x𝑘 ≤ 𝑥𝑘 ≤ 𝑥̄ 𝑘 (16) thresholds are rejected, and the edge provider’s utility function drops
⎪
𝑘 𝑘 𝑘 ¯
at their threshold points because of losing its customers and increases
⎪ 𝑥̄ 𝑘 𝑥𝑘 > 𝑥̄ 𝑘
⎩ after that. This latter is due to the increasing of the amount of the unit
Then, the common price for the players given by the Lagrange price and 𝑎𝑐𝑝 customers pay more than before.
multiplier is presented in (17):
𝜕𝐿𝑟𝑒𝑚
𝑘,𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝 𝑑𝑘 𝑑𝑘 Algorithm 1 Process of calculating the optimal communication and
= −
𝜕𝜆𝑘 (𝜃𝑘 𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 )(𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 +𝜆∗𝑘 − 𝑡 1𝑐 ) 𝜃𝑘 computation demand of MU 𝑘
𝑘 𝑘
(17) 1: 𝑝𝑘 = arg max 𝑈𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚 (𝑝𝑘 , 𝑝−𝑘 )
𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 𝑑𝑘
+ =0 𝑝∈𝑃𝑘
𝜃𝑘 (𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 +𝜆∗𝑘 − 𝑡 1𝑐 ) 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝
𝑘 𝑘 2: 𝑥𝑘 = arg max 𝑈𝑘 (𝑥𝑘 , 𝑥−𝑘 )
𝑥∈𝑋𝑘
From (17) we have 𝜆∗𝑘 = 0. In other words, the common price is zero,
3: use Algorithm 2 to get offered unit prices of communication and
which means the feasible solutions always satisfy the third constraint
computation resources
on computation resources of the optimization Eq. (6). More specifically,
4: if MU 𝑘 cannot afford the offered price then
as price went up, quantity demanded went down, or vice versa. As a
5: 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑘 = 0 //computation offloading decision which gets the
result, the edge provider offers the unit price in such a way that the
value of 0 if MU 𝑘’s computation runs locally and 1, otherwise
quantity demanded would be lower than its maximum capacity.
6: else
5.2. Edge provider’s (leader’s) strategy in stage I 7: 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑘 = 1
8: end if
Given the communication and computation demands of each MU, 9: return 𝑝∗𝑘 , 𝑝∗𝑘 , and 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑘
the edge provider chooses its strategy 𝑎𝑖 to maximize its utility function
defined in (9) anticipating that the followers will eventually respond
based on the Nash equilibrium in Stage 𝐼𝐼. We substitute (13) and (16), The maximum upper bound of MUs for communication and compu-
which are respectively a function of 𝜇𝑝 and 𝜇𝑥 , into (10) which leads tation resources is as (19) and (20), respectively.
to (18) as the MEC’s optimization problem. 𝐵 1
max{( − 𝛽𝑘 ) } (19)
𝑘∈𝐾 𝑡𝑘 p𝑘 𝛼𝑘 ℎ𝑘,𝑚
Proposition 5. The bounds on 𝜇𝑝 and 𝜇𝑥 are as (18). ¯

𝜃𝑘 𝛺𝑘 𝜃𝑘 (1− x¯𝑑 𝑘 ) 𝜆𝑘 1
Proof. Since price and quantity demanded always move in opposite max{ 𝑒 𝑘 − + } (20)
directions, we can find the minimum amount of quantity demanded 𝑘∈𝐾 𝑑𝑘 𝛼𝑘 𝛼𝑘 𝑡𝑘 𝑐𝑘 𝛼𝑘
by replacing 𝜇𝑝 /𝜇𝑥 by 𝜇̄ 𝑝 /𝜇̄ 𝑥 . The first condition of (18) shows the Thus, taking the fluctuations of the edge utility into account, we should
bounds on 𝜇𝑝 . If we set 𝑝𝑘 = p𝑘 p and 𝑝𝑘 = 𝑝̄𝑘 , we can obtain 𝜇̄ 𝑝 find the optimal solution in the 𝐾 − 1 intervals and choose one that
¯
and 𝜇 𝑝 𝜇 from (13). The second condition represents the bounds on 𝜇𝑥 . maximizes the edge provider’s utility function. Since the terms of (18),
¯
6
R. Roostaei et al. Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

Algorithm 2 Process of calculating the optimal unit prices of Proposition 7. Algorithm 2 finds the best solution in the polynomial-time,
communication and computation resources taking the number of accepted MUs into account.
1: Initialize 𝑇 𝑆𝐻 = (𝑇 𝑆𝐻1 , 𝑇 𝑆𝐻2 , … , 𝑇 𝑆𝐻𝐾 ) to be MUs’ threshold
on price. Proof. This algorithm finds the optimal solution in the 𝐾 − 1 intervals
2: 𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑡(𝑇 𝑆𝐻) and chooses one that maximizes the edge provider’s utility function. As
3: for each interval 𝑖 in 𝐾 − 1 do mentioned before, the terms of (18) is an increasing concave function,
4: 𝜇𝑝 (𝑖) = arg max 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 (𝜇𝑝,𝑛 , 𝑥−𝑛 , 𝑝−𝑛 ) and the optimal solution in each interval is the end of that. Moreover,
𝜇𝑝,𝑛 ∈𝜇̄ 𝑝 the terms of (18) is a concave function, and the problem is solved by
5: 𝜇𝑥 (𝑖) = arg max 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 (𝜇𝑥,𝑛 , 𝑥−𝑛 , 𝑝−𝑛 ) //by CVX CVX. As a result, the solution is derived in polynomial time.
𝜇𝑥,𝑛 ∈𝜇̄ 𝑥
6: end for
7: Select 𝜇𝑝∗ from 𝜇𝑝 which maximize 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 Proposition 8. Algorithm 2 provides a unique solution for (18).
8: Select 𝜇𝑥∗ from 𝜇𝑥 which maximize 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒
9: Edge provider offers 𝜇𝑝∗ and 𝜇𝑥∗ to MUs Proof. At first, we show the convexity of (18) ignoring its two subjects.
𝜕 2 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝜕 2 𝑈𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 2
10: return 𝜇𝑝∗ and 𝜇𝑥∗ It is easy to show < 0 and < 0 if condition 𝛼𝑘 𝜇𝑥 >
𝜕𝜇𝑝 (𝑝∗ )2 𝜕𝜇𝑥 (𝑥∗ )2 𝑡𝑘 𝑐 𝑘
holds (which always hold according to the simulation results). Further,
summation is one of the operations that preserve convexity. Thus, the
problem is convex and has a unique solution if we ignore two subjects.
Although these subjects are affine and they preserve the convexity,
the intersection of 𝐾 bounds may be infeasible. To deal with this,
our proposed algorithm divides the feasible range for variables into
several intervals and finds its unique solution for each interval. At last,
the maximum value of the edge provider’s utility is selected from the
unique points of each interval. As a result, the solution is unique.

6. Numerical results

In order to validate the SPE of the proposed Stackelberg game,

Fig. 2. Optimal communication unit price.
which is related to communication resources, is an increasing concave
function, the optimal solution in each interval is the end of that. More-
over, the terms of (18) which is related to computation resources, is a
concave function, and the optimal solution is calculated with the aid
of CVX, which is one of the optimization tools of MATLAB. Algorithm
1 and 2 show the concrete steps of calculating the optimal communi-
cation and computation demand of MU 𝑘 and their corresponding unit
price, respectively.
Proposition 6. The complexity of the proposed algorithm 1 is 𝑂(1).
Proof. As we obtained the closed-form solution of the transmission
power and the computation resources, the complexity of algorithm 1 is
𝑂(1).
we implemented our proposed approach using the MATLAB tool and
carried out a wide range of evaluations under different MUs’ prefer-
ences for payment defined by the 𝛼𝑘 parameter. The aim is to find the
influence of MUs’ purchasing power and the MUs’ offloading priority on
the efficiency of computation offloading. For this perspective, we con-
sidered a set of performance metrics, including optimal price, average
allocated communication and computation resources, the number of
rejected MUs who cannot afford the offered price, and the utility of MUs
and the edge provider. The outputs are compared to JCORAO proposed
in [8] due to their similarity comparing to other alternatives in the
mentioned literature. Authors in [8] provide the optimal computation
offloading strategy policy, uplink transmission power allocation under
OMA transmission system, and computation resource allocation. More-
over, this paper takes a fixed pricing approach into account and ignores
the cross-tier interference from one tier to another. The objective of
the optimization problem is to minimize all MUs’ costs while satisfying
offloading latency constraints. Random and fixed pricing under the
NOMA transmission system are the other two mechanisms considered
for comparison. It is worthy of noting that the results of the random and
fixed pricing mechanism may be similar if the mean of the random price
range and the fixed price value would be the same. To enable tractable

Fig. 3. Optimal computation unit price.

7
R. Roostaei et al. Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

Fig. 4. Number of rejected MUs.

analysis and get useful insights, we assume that the fixed price value is
lower than the mean of the random price range. Note that we show the
proposed approach, random pricing, fixed pricing, and the approach
proposed in [8] as PA, Rnd- Prc, FP, and JCORAO, respectively.
For our simulations, ℎ𝑘,𝑠 and 𝑔𝑃 𝑈 ,𝑠 are considered as Rayleigh
fading channels expressed by 1𝛼 𝐺, ̃ where 𝐺̃ is modeled as independent
𝑑2
and identically distributed (i.i.d.) zero-mean complex Gaussian random
variables with unit variance. Moreover, 𝑑 is the distance of MU from the
BS. The distance of SU 𝑘 from the mBS 𝑠 is randomly selected from the
interval [1, 50](m) and 𝛼 is the pathloss factor which is set to 4 [19].
Similarly, the distance of SU 𝑘 from the MBS is picked from the range
[150, 250](m), and 𝛼 is set to 2.5 for this case. Moreover, we assume
that the mBS is located at the edge of MBS’s coverage and hence the
distance of PU from the mBS is selected from the range [51, 400](m),
and 𝛼 is in the range [2.5, 4]. Additionally, 𝑝𝑘′ and 𝑝𝑃 𝑈 are uniformly
selected from the interval [0.014, 0.3](w). The input parameters are
shown in Table 1.
Fig. 2 and 3(a) show the effect of increasing the number of MUs with
the same 𝛼𝑘 on 𝜇𝑝∗ and 𝜇𝑥∗ , respectively. In both figures, by increasing
the number of MUs with 𝛼𝑘 = 1, 𝜇𝑝∗ and 𝜇𝑥∗ also increase since the
number of MUs who tend to pay high prices increases. As a result, Fig. 5. Number of rejected MUs under PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc.
the edge provider rises 𝜇𝑝∗ and 𝜇𝑥∗ due to the fact that these MUs’
thresholds are high enough to satisfy its offered price. Further, if the
majority of MUs cannot afford to pay high prices, their unison forces the for the same reason. MUs have various preferences for offloading,
edge provider to reduce its offered price. Although the edge provider and as a result, their demands vary accordingly, as shown in Eq. (6).
is a monopolist and has market power, MUs’ unison can influence its Consequently, Fig. 3(b) illustrate the offered unit price under different
offered price since the edge provider considers MUs’ demands, which is priorities for offloading. From (18) we find that the price threshold for
related to their thresholds on unit price. As shown in these two figures, MUs with the higher 𝜃𝑘 is more than that of MUs. As can be observed
all curves are ordered with respect to 𝛼𝑘 , and their difference increases in Fig. 3(b), the unit price of the curve with 𝜃𝑘 = 5 is more than other
as their unison increases. Conversely, when the percentage of MUs with curves. Generally, MUs who have an impact on the offered price are
the same 𝛼𝑘 is lower than 20, the results are in the opposite direction those with the same 𝛼𝑘 and 𝜃𝑘 as the majority of MUs have.

8
R. Roostaei et al.
Fig. 6. Average allocated transmission power.
Fig. 7. Average allocated transmission power under PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc.
Figs. 4(a), 4(b), 4(c), and 4(d) illustrate the number of rejected
MUs due to any of the communication or computation resources in our
solution, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc, respectively. Note that MUs under
PA, FP, and Rnd- Prc will be rejected if their thresholds on the unit price
are not satisfied. Conversely, under JCORAO, MUs will be rejected if the
weighted sum of the energy consumption and payment is more than the
cost of local execution.
9
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
As Fig. 4(a) shows, when the number of MUs with low or high 𝛼𝑘
(e.g., 𝛼𝑘 = 5, 4, and 1) increases up to a certain percentage, the number
of rejected MUs increases due to the further number of MUs with low
purchasing power. Furthermore, this initial upward trend observed in
the curve with 𝛼𝑘 = 1, is due to the initial increasing in the unit price
of the corresponding curves as shown in Figs. 2 and 3(a). In such a
case, the edge provider prefers to sell its resources at high prices, and
MUs who are not eager to buy in this situation are hence rejected.
In addition to 𝛼𝑘 = 1, the curve with 𝛼𝑘 = 5 shows that the MUs’
purchasing power is low and their thresholds are not satisfied under
the offered price. However, when the majority of MUs are not eager to
pay high prices, the edge provider reduces the optimal price for both
resources to avoid losing its customers. As a result, MUs’ thresholds are
not met, and consequently, the number of rejected MUs decreases. In
the JCORAO/FP/Rnd- Prc approaches, the edge provider determines
a fixed/fixed/random price and does not pay attention to the MUs’
demands. Consequently, as can be seen in Figs. 4(b), 4(c), and 4(d),
the number of rejected MUs has a monotone increasing or decreasing
trend based on different MUs’ preferences for payment. In the case with
𝛼𝑘 = 5, the number of MUs who are not eager to pay is increasing,
and as a result, they cannot afford the fixed or random price and then
reject. Conversely, the curve with 𝛼𝑘 = 1 indicates the situation, that
there are more MUs whose threshold is higher than the offered price,
and hence, the number of rejected MUs is lower than the other cases. In
Fig. 5, the number of rejected MUs under all approaches is illustrated
through the 3D graph, and for the sake of simplicity, 𝛼𝑘 is set to 3. It
is shown that the number of rejected MUs has a tendency to increase
in the order of PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc, meaning our results
outperform JCORAO, FP, and Rnd-Prc. JCORAO has the better results
compared with FP and Rnd- Prc due to its resource allocation. FP leads
to lower number of rejected MUs since it proposes the lower unit price
which is compatible with more MUs’ thresholds.
R. Roostaei et al. Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

Fig. 8. Average cross-tier interference.

Fig. 9. Average allocated computation resource.

Figs. 6(a), 6(b), 6(c), and 6(d) depict the average allocated power
under the proposed approach, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc. In Fig. 6(a),
all curves are almost ascending due to the fact that the strategy of
the edge provider is to adjust the offered price with its customers’
demand and incentivize them for offloading. As algorithm 2 shows, the
edge provider trades off between the number of MUs as its customer
and the unit price, due to the law of demand stated that the quantity
purchased varies inversely with the unit price. Moreover, an initial
downward trend is observed in curves with 𝛼𝑘 = 1 and 𝛼𝑘 = 5, which
is due to the initial sharp upward trend in their corresponding curves
in Fig. 4(a). Moreover, these two cases have less transmission power
compared with other cases. In the case with 𝛼𝑘 = 1, the offered price is
high, and according to the law of demand at a higher price consumers
will demand a lower quantity. Moreover, the corresponding number
of rejected MUs of these two cases are higher compared with other
cases and hence the mean of the allocated resources is low accordingly.
Furthermore, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc have the same trends with
respect to different MUs’ preferences for payment. For instance, curves
with 𝛼𝑘 = 5 have a monotone decreasing, since the increment in the
percentage of MUs with 𝛼𝑘 = 5 leads to more rejection and less average
allocated transmission power.
Fig. 7 illustrates the comparison between these three schemes for
𝛼𝑘 = 3. JCORAO allocates more transmission power to MUs due
to the interference-free nature of OMA and ignoring the cross-tier
interference. Moreover, PA outperforms FP and Rnd- Prc since the
number of rejected MUs who cannot access communication resources

10
R. Roostaei et al.
Fig. 10. Average allocated computation resource under PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd-
Prc.
under FP and Rnd- Prc is higher than PA. Additionally, FP has the
better performance compared with Rnd- Prc. Furthermore, the impact
of increasing the transmission power on the amount of cross-tier in-
terference received by PU/SU is depicted in 8(a)/ 8(b). While reuse of
spectrum improves spectral efficiency, if MUs offload their computation
with high levels of transmission power, the QoS of PU is degraded.
As can be observed in Fig. 8(a), PU receives more interference under
Fig. 11. Edge provider’s utility.
11
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
Fig. 12. Edge provider’s utility under PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc.
JCORAO compared to PA. Since MBS should guarantee the specified
QoS level for PU, MBS allocates more power to PU, which results in
more cross-tier interference received by SUs as shown in 8(b).
Figs. 9(a), 9(b), 9(c), and 9(d) evaluate our proposed solution,
JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc with respect to the average allocated
computation resources. All curves are almost ascending in Fig. 9(a)
and similar to Fig. 6(a) an initial downward trend is observed in the
R. Roostaei et al.
Fig. 13. Average MUs’ utility (different 𝛼𝑘 ).
Fig. 14. Average MUs’ cost under PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc.
curve with 𝛼𝑘 = 1 and 𝛼𝑘 = 5. The reason is discussed earlier, under
Fig. 6(a). The average allocated computation resources under 𝛼𝑘 = 1
and 𝛼𝑘 = 5 are lower than other cases. This is due to the fact that
in the case with 𝛼𝑘 = 1, the high unit price is offered, and the MUs’
demand reduces. Moreover, the number of rejected MUs in both cases
leads to lower allocated computation resources. Consequently, as can
be seen in Figs. 9(b), 9(c), and 9(d), the average allocated computation
resources under JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc has a monotone increasing
12
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
or decreasing trend based on different MUs’ preferences for payment.
Moreover, Fig. 10 gives comparison between PA, JCORAO, FP, and
Rnd- Prc for 𝛼𝑘 = 3. Results show that PA outperforms JCORAO, FP, and
Rnd- Prc in terms of computation resources. This is due to the proposed
pricing mechanism, which reduces the number of rejected MUs and
makes MUs purchase more resources. Moreover, the fixed pricing mech-
anism improves the average computation resources allocated to MUs
compared with Rnd- Prc due to the lower value for offered price and
number of rejected MUs rather than the random pricing mechanism.
In Figs. 11(a), 11(b), 11(c), and 11(d) we investigate the utility
of the edge provider achieved by PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc,
respectively. As Fig. 11(a) shows, the utility of the edge provider
depends on the percentage of MUs with lower 𝛼𝑘 . More explicitly, the
utility of the edge provider is increasing for curves with 𝛼𝑘 = 1 to 2, for
which the offered price increases due to the higher purchasing power of
MUs. However, for further values of 𝛼𝑘 , the utility of the edge provider
is decreasing since MUs are not eager to pay and force the provider to
reduce the offered price. Moreover, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc schemes
yield the inverse results as those have in figures demonstrating the
number of rejected MUs. As can be observed in Figs. 11(b), 11(c), and
11(d), the utility of the edge provider is ascending under 𝛼𝑘 = 1 since
corresponding curves indicate the situation where the number of MUs
with high purchasing power is more than other cases. On the contrary,
the utility of the edge provider is decreasing when 𝛼𝑘 = 5 meaning MUs
are not eager to pay. Fig. 12 demonstrates the comparison between
four approaches with 𝛼𝑘 = 3. As can be seen in this figure, PA
outperforms other alternatives since it considers both edge and user
levels preferences. Moreover, results under the fixed pricing mechanism
outperform Rnd- Prc due to the lower value for offered price rather than
the random pricing mechanism. This latter improves the utility of the
edge provider by increasing the existing customers.
R. Roostaei et al. Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352

Fig. 15. Average MUs’ cost under PA.

Fig. 16. Average MUs’ cost under PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc.

As Fig. 13 shows, MUs’ cost is evaluated under different MUs’ pref-

erences for payment. As the nature of the MUs’ utility is negative, we
show the positive form of that for simplicity. The results are consistent
with results derived by the number of rejected MUs, average allocated
power, and computation resources. As can be observed in Fig. 13(a), the
average MUs utility is almost ascending under the proposed approach.
The initial downward trend in the curve with 𝛼𝑘 = 1 is observed due
to the initial upward trend of the corresponding curves in Figs. 2 and
3(a). Moreover, the average MUs’ utility for 𝛼𝑘 = 1 and 𝛼𝑘 = 5 is lower
than others. This is due to the fact that in the case with 𝛼𝑘 = 1 MUs
should buy their resources at a high price, and the number of rejected
MUs is high in both cases. The utility of MUs under JCORAO, FP, and
Rnd- Prc is highly dependent on the value for 𝛼𝑘 , which represents
the purchasing power of the customers and the number of MUs who
survived, as mentioned before. Fig. 14 depicts the MUs’ utility under
PA, JCORAO, FP, and Rnd- Prc. The proposed approach outperforms
other alternatives due to the fact that it provides optimal pricing, higher
allocated computation resources, managing the transmission power
level, considering the cross-tier interference, and lower rejected MUs.
Moreover, since in the fixed pricing mechanism, the offered price is
lower than the mean of the random price values, FP leads to the higher
average MUs’ utility rather than Rnd- Prc.
Fig. 15 illustrates the average MUs’ cost under different priorities Fig. 17. Average MUs’ cost under PA,JCORAO, RP, and FP.
for offloading. It is clear that MUs with higher priority for offloading
are more sensitive to the offered price and resources allocated to them.
As mentioned before, the offered price for the case with 𝛼𝑘 = 5 is higher computation resources required for proper offloading in 5G networks
than other cases and correspondingly, the average MUs’ utility is lower and beyond. The NOMA-based power allocation mechanism is modeled
than other cases. Further, the MUs’ cost under PA, JCORAO, FP, and using game theory and showed adjusting the potential game. Similarly,
Rnd- Prc with respect to different values for 𝜃𝑘 is depicted in Fig. 16. We the computation resource allocation is modeled using game theory,
find that PA outperforms other alternatives under different priorities for and we showed it admits WCCG. We derived the optimal amount of
offloading. communication and computation resources for MUs, and investigated
Finally, the decision overhead of PA and JCORAO under different the optimal price that the monopolist edge provider should set in order
numbers of MUs is illustrated in Fig. 17. As discussed before, the to maximize its utility. Moreover, we obtained closed-form solutions as
complexity of PA is polynomial, while the complexity of JCORAO is well as numerical results.
exponential. The exponential complexity for the offloading decision is The evaluations carried out under different purchasing power of
not applicable in real scenarios since it may be better if MUs execute MUs proved the efficiency of our approach in terms of the utility
computations rather than the offloading decision process. of MUs and the edge provider; average allocated communication and
computation resources, optimal pricing, and the number of rejected
7. Conclusion MUs. Results showed that the edge provider should adopt its offered
price based on the MUs’ demands. We found that despite the monopoly
In this paper, we proposed a single-leader multi-follower Stackel- market, the unison of MUs for their threshold has an important role
berg game to dynamically allocate and price both communication and in determining the price offered by the edge provider. As future work,

13
R. Roostaei et al.
we intend to integrate our proposed model with fine-grain computation
offloading. Moreover, we plan to investigate the efficiency of offloading
under other types of markets existing in real-world scenarios including
the oligopoly market.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Razie Roostaei: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation,
Software, Writing – original draft. Zahra Dabiri: Investigation, Soft-
ware, Writing – original draft. Zeinab Movahedi: Conceptualization,
Investigation, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
editing, Supervision, Project administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
References
[1] S.M.R. Islam, N. Avazov, O.A. Dobre, K.-s. Kwak, Power-domain non-orthogonal
multiple access (NOMA) in 5G systems: Potentials and challenges, IEEE Commun.
Surv. Tutor. 19 (2) (2017) 721–742, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2016.
2621116.
[2] Y. Saito, Y. Kishiyama, A. Benjebbour, T. Nakamura, A. Li, K. Higuchi, Non-
orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for cellular future radio access, IEEE VTC
Spring (2013) 1–5, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/VTCSpring.2013.6692652.
[3] Q. Sun, S. Han, C.-L. I, Z. Pan, On the ergodic capacity of MIMO NOMA systems,
IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett. 4 (4) (2015) 405–408, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/
LWC.2015.2426709.
[4] B. Baek, J. Lee, Y. Peng, S. Park, Three dynamic pricing schemes for resource
allocation of edge computing for IoT environment, IEEE Internet Things J. 7 (5)
(2020) 4292–4303, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2020.2966627.
[5] Y. Wang, S. Meng, Y. Chen, R. Sun, X. Wang, K. Sun, Multi-leader multi-follower
stackelberg game based dynamic resource allocation for mobile cloud computing
environment, Wirel. Pers. Commun. 93 (2017) 461–480, http://dx.doi.org/10.
1007/s11277-016-3351-4.
[6] D.T. Nguyen, L.B. Le, V. Bhargava, Price-based resource allocation for edge
computing: A market equilibrium approach, IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput. 57
(2018) 1–19, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCC.2018.2844379.
[7] S.-H. Kim, S. Park, M. Chen, Y. Chan-Hyun, An optimal pricing scheme for
the energy-efficient mobile edge computation offloading with ofdma, IEEE
Commun. Lett. 22 (9) (2018) 1922–1925, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LCOMM.
2018.2849401.
[8] J. Zhang, W. Xia, F. Yan, L. Shen, Joint computation offloading and resource
allocation optimization in heterogeneous networks with mobile edge computing,
IEEE Access 6 (2018) 19324–19337, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.
2819690.
[9] T.Q. Dinh, J. Tang, Q.D. La, T.Q.S. Quek, Offloading in mobile edge computing:
Task allocation and computational frequency scaling, IEEE Trans. Commun. 65
(8) (2017) 3571–3584, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCOMM.2017.2699660.
[10] Q. Li, J. Zhao, Y. Gong, Q. Zhang, Energy-efficient computation offloading and
resource allocation in fog computing for internet of everything, China Commun.
16 (3) (2019) 32–41, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2018.8422317.
[11] X. Chen, W. Li, S. Lu, Z. Zhou, X. Fu, Efficient resource allocation for on-
demand mobile-edge cloud computing, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 67 (9) (2018)
8769–8780, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2018.2846232.
[12] T. X. Tran, D. Pompili, Joint task offloading and resource allocation for multi-
server mobile-edge computing networks, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 68 (2018)
856–868, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2018.2881191.
[13] Z. Xiong, S. Feng, W. Wang, D. Niyato, P. Wang, Z. Han, Cloud/fog computing
resource management and pricing for blockchain networks, IEEE Internet Things
J. 6 (3) (2019) 4585–4600, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2018.2871706.
[14] Y. Chen, Z. Li, B. Yang, K. Nai, K. Li, A stackelberg game approach to
multiple resources allocation and pricing in mobile edge computing, Future
Gener. Comput. Syst. 108 (2020) 273–287, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.
2020.02.045.
14
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
[15] H. Cheny, D. Zhao, Q. Cheny, R. Chai, Joint computation offloading and radio
resource allocations in wireless cellular networks, in: International Conference
on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP), 4, (3) 2018, pp.
745–758, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TGCN.2020.2976932.
[16] Z. Zhu, J. Peng, X. Gu, H. Li, K. Liu, Z. Zhou, W. Liu, Fair resource allocation
for system throughput maximization in mobile edge computing, IEEE Access 6
(2018) 5332–5340, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2790963.
[17] T. Zhang, Data offloading in mobile edge computing: A coalition and pricing
based approach, IEEE Access 6 (2017) 2760–2767, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/
ACCESS.2017.2785265.
[18] C. Yi, J. Cai, S. Zhou, A multi-user mobile computation offloading and transmis-
sion scheduling mechanism for delay-sensitive applications, IEEE Trans. Mob.
Comput. 19 (1) (2019) 29–43, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2019.2891736.
[19] X. Chen, L. Jiao, W. Li, X. Fu, Efficient multi-user computation offloading for
mobile-edge cloud computing, IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 24 (5) (2015) 2795–2808,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2015.2487344.
[20] Z. Tong, X. Deng, F. Yea, S. Basodi, X. Xiao, Y. Pan, Adaptive computation
offloading and resource allocation strategy in a mobile edge computing environ-
ment, Inform. Sci. 537 (2020) 116–131, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2020.05.
057.
[21] S. Josilo, G. Dan, Selfish decentralized computation offloading for mobile cloud
computing in dense wireless networks, EEE Trans. Mob. Comput. 18 (1) (2019)
207–220, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2018.2829874.
[22] A. Kiani, N. Ansari, Edge computing aware noma for 5G networks, IEEE
Internet Things J. 5 (2) (2018) 1299–1306, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.
2018.2796542.
[23] Y. Liu, F.R. Yu, X. Li, H. Ji, V.C.M. Leung, Distributed resource allocation
and computation offloading in fog and cloud networks with non-orthogonal
multiple access, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 67 (12) (2018) 12137–12151, http:
//dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2018.2872912.
[24] J. Qadir, B. Sainz-De-Abajo, A. Khan, B. Garcia-Zapirain, I.D.L. Torre-Diez, H.
Mahmood, Towards mobile edge computing: Taxonomy, challenges, applications
and future realms, IEEE Access (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.
3026938, 1–1.
[25] P. Mach, Z. Becvar, Mobile edge computing: A survey on architecture and
computation offloading, IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor. 19 (3) (2017) 1628–1656,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2017.2682318.
[26] X. Wang, Y. Han, V.C.M. Leung, D. Niyato, X. Y, X. Chen, Convergence of edge
computing and deep learning: A comprehensive survey, IEEE Commun. Surv.
Tutor. 22 (2) (2020) 869–904, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2020.2970550.
[27] Q.-V. Pham, F. Fang, V.N. Ha, M.J. Piran, M. Le, L.B. Le, W.-J. Hwang, Z. Ding,
A survey of multi-access edge computing in 5G and beyond: Fundamentals, tech-
nology integration, and state-of-the-art, IEEE Access 8 (2020) 116974–117017,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3001277.
[28] A. Shakarami, M. Ghobaei-Arani, A. Shahidinejad, A survey on the computation
offloading approaches in mobile edge computing: A machine learning-based per-
spective, Comput. Netw. 182 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2020.
107496, 1–1.
[29] H. Lin, S. Zeadally, Z. Chen, H. Labiod, L. Wang, A survey on computation
offloading modeling for edge computing, J. Netw. Comput. Appl. 169 (2020)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2020.102781, 1–1.
[30] M.S. Aslanpour, S.S. Gill, A.N. Toosia, Performance evaluation metrics for cloud,
fog and edge computing: A review, taxonomy, benchmarks and standards for
future research, Internet of Things 12 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iot.
2020.100273, 1–1.
[31] H. Li, H. Xu, C. Zhou, X. Lü, Z. Han, Joint optimization strategy of computation
offloading and resource allocation in multi-access edge computing environment,
IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 69 (9) (2020) 10214–10226, http://dx.doi.org/10.
1109/TVT.2020.3003898.
[32] M. Al-Imari, P. Xiao, M.A. Imran, R. Tafazolli, Uplink non-orthogonal multiple
access for 5G wireless networks, in: International Symposium on Wireless Com-
munications Systems (ISWCS), 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISWCS.2014.
6933459, 1–1.
[33] Z. Yang, Z. Ding, P. Fa, G.K. Karagiannidis, On the performance of non-
orthogonal multiple access systems with partial channel information, IEEE
Trans. Commun. 64 (2) (2016) 654–667, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCOMM.
2015.2511078.
[34] Y. Liu, C. Xu, Y. Zhan, Z. Liu, J. Guan, H. Zhang, Incentive mechanism for
computation offloading using edge computing: A stackelberg game approach,
Comput. Netw. 192 (2) (2017) 399–409, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.
2017.03.015.
R. Roostaei et al.
[35] M. Li, S. Yang, Z. Zhang, J. Ren, G. Yu, Joint subcarrier and power allocation for
OFDMA based mobile edge computing system, in: IEEE 28th Annual International
Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC),
2017, pp. 1–6, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/PIMRC.2017.8292207.
[36] A. Mas-Colell, M.D. Whinston, J.R. Green, Microeconomic Theory, vol. 1995,
Oxford University Press, 1995.
[37] J.P. Hespanha, Noncooperative Game Theory: An Introduction for Engineers and
Computer Scientists, vol. 2017, Princeton University Press, 2017.
[38] A. Galindo-Serrano, E. Altman, L. Giupponi, Equilibrium selection in interference
management non-cooperative games in femtocell networks, in: 6th International
Conference in Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools (VALUETOOLS),
2012, pp. 198–203, http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/valuetools.2012.250306.
[39] Amazon instance types, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
instance-types/. (Accessed 30 June 2020).
Razie Roostaei received her M.Sc. degree in Computer
Networks from Iran University of Science and Technology
(IUST) in 2016. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in
Network and Computer Science at IUST. She was qualified
as a distinguished M.Sc. student and awarded the exam-
free entrance to Ph.D. She works actually in Networks and
Pervasive Computing (NPC) laboratory under the supervi-
sion of Dr. Zeinab Movahedi, Assistant Professor in IUST.
Her research interests include mobile cloud computing,
edge computing, resource allocation, pricing and network
economics, and game theory.
15
Computer Networks 198 (2021) 108352
Zahra Dabiri received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Sci-
ence from Shahed University and her M.Sc. in Computer
Networks from Iran University of Science and Technology
(IUST), Tehran, Iran, in 2015 and 2019, respectively. Her
research interests include mobile computation offloading,
edge computing, game theory, optimization, and IoT.
Zeinab Movahedi is currently an Assistant Professor at Iran
University of Science and Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran,
and the head of the Network and Pervasive Computing
(NPC) laboratory. In 2018, she obtained her HDR (Habil-
itation à Diriger des Recherche) from Sorbonne Universite,
France. She pursued her post-doctoral research at University
of Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC-Sorbonne Universite),
Paris, France and received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees
in Networks and Computer Engineering from the same
institution in 2007 and 2011, respectively. She was in-
volved in many European and national research projects,
including Autonomic Internet (FP7), FUI PODIUM and the
Franco-Iranian Hubert Curien Partnerships of Mobile Cloud
Computing in 5G. Her research interests include 5G, SDN,
IoT, smart cities, mobile cloud/edge offloading, M2M/D2D
communications, green communications, trust management
and autonomic networks.