Game-theoretic Analysis of Computation Offloading for Cloudlet-based Mobile Cloud Computing

Mobile cloud computing (MC2) is emerging as a promising computing paradigm which helps alleviate the conflict between resource-constrained mobile devices and resource-consuming mobile applications through computation offloading. In this paper, we analyze the computation offloading problem in cloudlet-based mobile cloud computing. Different from most of the previous works which are either from the perspective of a single user or under the setting of a single wireless access point (AP), we research the computation offloading strategy of multiple users via multiple wireless APs. With the widespread deployment of WLAN, offloading via multiple wireless APs will obtain extensive application. Taking energy consumption and delay (including computing and transmission delay) into account, we present a game-theoretic analysis of the computation offloading problem while mimicking the selfish nature of the individuals. In the case of homogeneous mobile users, conditions of Nash equilibrium are analyzed, and an algorithm that admits a Nash equilibrium is proposed. For heterogeneous users, we prove the existence of Nash equilibrium by introducing the definition of exact potential game and design a distributed computation offloading algorithm to help mobile users choose proper offloading strategies. Numerical extensive simulations have been conducted and results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve desired system performance.