Description

We study the problem of user cost minimization in mobile cloud computing (MCC) networks. We consider a MCC model where multiple brokers assign cloud resources to mobile users. The model is characterized by an heterogeneous cloud architecture (which includes a public cloud and a cloudlet) and by the heterogeneous pricing strategies of cloud service providers. We investigate two classes of cloud reservation strategies, i.e., a competitive strategy, and a compete-then-cooperate strategy as a performance bound. We first study a purely competitive scenario where brokers compete to reserve computing resources from remote public clouds (which are affected by long delays) and from local cloudlets (which have limited computational resources but short delays). We provide theoretical results demonstrating the existence of disagreement points (i.e., the equilibrium reservation strategy that no broker has incentive to deviate unilaterally from) and convergence of the best response strategies of the brokers to disagreement points.