Nonlinear Online Incentive Mechanism Design in Edge Computing Systems With Energy Budget

In this paper, we consider task offloading in edge computing systems, where tasks are offloaded by the base station to resourceful mobile users. With the consideration of unique characteristics in practical edge computing systems, such as dynamic arrival of computation tasks, and energy constraints at battery-powered mobile users, we formulate an incentive mechanism design problem by jointly optimizing task offloading decisions, and allocation of both communications (i.e., power and bandwidth), and computation resources. In order to tackle the nonlinear issue in the designed mechanism, a novel online incentive mechanism is proposed. We first convert the original mechanism design problem into several one-shot design problems by temporally removing the energy constraint. Then, we propose a new mechanism design framework, called the Integrate Rounding Scheme based Maxima-in-distributional Range (IRSM), and based on that, design a new incentive mechanism for each one-shot problem. Finally, we reconsider energy constraints to design a new nonlinear online incentive mechanism by rationally combining the previously derived one-shot ones. Theoretical analyses show that our proposed nonlinear online incentive mechanism can guarantee individual rationality, truthfulness, a sound competitive ratio, and computational efficiency. We further conduct comprehensive simulations to validate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed mechanism.