AGORA: A Multi-Provider Edge Computing Resource Management and Pricing Framework

Multi-provider multi-user multi-access edge computing provides a recent market-driven networking paradigm facilitating the user data offloading process. In this paper we introduce the AGORA framework, which employs a sophisticated multi-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game that jointly optimizes the data offloading, computing resource allocation, and computing resource pricing, all facilitated through a non-cooperative game-theoretic approach. In order to support the aforementioned modeling and approach, a novel utility function that quantifies the users satisfaction, factoring in the computing service cost, and an innovative profit function for the MEC providers is introduced, emphasizing the market penetration and the computing service provision costs. Numerical results, obtained via modeling and simulation, demonstrate AGORA’s remarkable adaptability, accommodating homogeneous and heterogeneous user computing demands, while simultaneously outperforming proportional fairness resource allocation approaches, and significantly enhancing the MEC providers’ profitability and the users’ satisfaction from the edge computing services.