Pricing and Resource Allocation via Game Theory for a Small-Cell Video Caching System
- 6 June 2016
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
- Vol. 34 (8), 2115-2129
- https://doi.org/10.1109/jsac.2016.2577278
Abstract
Evidence indicates that downloading on-demand videos accounts for a dramatic increase in data traffic over cellular networks. Caching popular videos in the storage of small-cell base stations (SBS), namely, small-cell caching, is an efficient technology for reducing the transmission latency while mitigating the redundant transmissions of popular videos over back-haul channels. In this paper, we consider a commercialized small-cell caching system consisting of a network service provider (NSP), several video retailers (VRs), and mobile users (MUs). The NSP leases its SBSs to the VRs for the purpose of making profits, and the VRs, after storing popular videos in the rented SBSs, can provide faster local video transmissions to the MUs, thereby gaining more profits. We conceive this system within the framework of Stackelberg game by treating the SBSs as specific types of resources. We first model the MUs and SBSs as two independent Poisson point processes, and develop, via stochastic geometry theory, the probability of the specific event that an MU obtains the video of its choice directly from the memory of an SBS. Then, based on the probability derived, we formulate a Stackelberg game to jointly maximize the average profit of both the NSP and the VRs. In addition, we investigate the Stackelberg equilibrium by solving a non-convex optimization problem. With the aid of this game theoretic framework, we shed light on the relationship between four important factors: the optimal pricing of leasing an SBS, the SBSs allocation among the VRs, the storage size of the SBSs, and the popularity distribution of the VRs. Monte Carlo simulations show that our stochastic geometry-based analytical results closely match the empirical ones. Numerical results are also provided for quantifying the proposed game-theoretic framework by showing its efficiency on pricing and resource allocation.Funding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (61501238, 61271230, 61472190)
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (30916011205)
- Jiangsu Provincial Science Foundation (BK20150786)
- Specially Appointed Professor Program in Jiangsu Province, 2015
- Open Research Fund of National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Environment (201500013)
- open research fund of National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University (2013D02)
- Australian Research Council (DP120100405, DP150104019)
- Faculty of Engineering and IT Early Career Researcher Scheme 2016, The University of Sydney
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