A Mobile-assisted Edge Computing Framework for Emerging IoT Applications

Edge computing (EC) is a promising paradigm for providing ultra-low latency experience for IoT applications at the network edge, through pre-caching required services in fixed edge nodes. However, the supply-demand mismatch can arise while meeting the peak period of some specific service requests. The mismatch between capacity provision and user demands can be fatal to the delay-sensitive user requests of emerging IoT applications and will be further exacerbated due to the long service provisioning cycle. To tackle this problem, we propose the mobile-assisted edge computing framework to improve the QoS of fixed edge nodes by exploiting mobile edge nodes. Furthermore, we devise a CRI (Credible, Reciprocal, and Incentive) auction mechanism to stimulate mobile edge nodes to participate in the services for user requests. The advantages of our mobile-assisted edge computing framework include higher task completion rate, profit maximization, and computational efficiency. Meanwhile, the theoretical analysis and experimental results guarantee the desirable economic properties ofour CRI auction mechanism.