Marginal Value-Based Edge Resource Pricing and Allocation for Deadline-Sensitive Tasks

In edge computing (EC), resource allocation is to allocate computing, storage and networking resources on the edge nodes (ENs) efficiently and reasonably to tasks generated by users. Due to the resource-limitation of ENs, the tasks often need to compete for the resources. Pricing mechanisms are widely used to deal with the resource allocation problem, and the valuations of tasks play a critical role in the price mechanisms. However, users naturally are not willing to expose the valuations of their tasks due to conflicts of interests. Current research works usually adopt truthful auctions to motivate the users to report honestly the valuations of their tasks. In this paper, we introduce the marginal value to estimate the valuations of tasks, and propose a marginal value-based pricing mechanism using the incentive theory, which motivates the tasks with higher marginal values to actively request more resources. The EC platform sets the resource prices using the price mechanism, and then the users determine their resource requests relying on the resource prices and the valuations of their tasks. After receiving the deadline-sensitive tasks from the users, the resource allocation can be modeled as a knapsack problem with the deadline constraints. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our approach is computationally efficient and is promising in enhancing the utility of the EC platform and the tasks.