AI Applications Resource Allocation in Computing Continuum: A Stackelberg Game Approach

The growth, development, and commercialization of artificial intelligence-based technologies such as self-driving cars, augmented-reality viewers, chatbots, and virtual assistants are driving the need for increased computing power. Most of these applications rely on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), which demand substantial computing capacity to meet user demands. However, this capacity cannot be fully provided by users' local devices due to their limited processing power, nor by cloud data centers due to high transmission latency from long distances. Edge cloud computing addresses this issue by processing user requests through 5G, which reduces transmission latency from local devices to computing resources and allows the offloading of some computations to cloud back-ends. This paper introduces a model for a Mobile Edge Cloud system designed for an application based on a DNN. The interaction among multiple mobile users and the edge platform is formulated as a one-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game, resulting in a challenging non-convex mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. To tackle this, we propose a heuristic approach based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, which solves the MINLP problem significantly faster than the commercial state-of-the-art solvers (up to 50,000 times). Furthermore, we present an algorithm to estimate optimal platform profit when sensitive user parameters are unknown. Comparing this with the full-knowledge scenario, we observe a profit loss of approximately 1%. Lastly, we analyze the advantages for an edge provider to engage in a Stackelberg game rather than setting a fixed price for its users, showing potential profit increases ranging from 16% to 66%.