Towards Effective Resource Procurement in MEC: a Resource Re-selling Framework

On-demand and resource reservation pricing models have been widely used in cloud computing, catering to different user requirements. Nevertheless, in Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), as the edge has limited resources compared to the cloud, on-demand users may not get their jobs served on time, or at all, if too many resources were reserved by reservation plan users. Concurrently, reservation plan users may possess excess un-utilized quota. To optimize this resource mismatch scenario, we propose a Sharing Quota Model (SQM) where reservation plan users can re-sell unused resource quota to on-demand users, with the mobile network operator (MNO) taking a commission. To analyze the user's aggregate behavior at equilibrium and investigate the MNO's incentive of allowing re-selling, we formulate a 3-stage non-cooperative Stackelberg Game. Solving this game, we characterize the optimal strategies of buyers and re-sellers. We show that on aggregate, users' optimal strategies give rise to 4 disjoint regions, dependent on the MNO's prices and supply levels. Based on this, we characterise the MNO's optimal prices for on-demand users. Numerical results show that having both the sharing and on-demand pool gives the MNO an optimal revenue when the on-demand pool's supply is low, and when the MNO's commission is low.