Double Auction-Based Two-Level Resource Allocation Mechanism for Computation Offloading in Mobile Blockchain Application

Abstract

It is increasingly popular that platforms integrate various services into mobile applications due to the high usage and convenience of mobile devices, many of which demand high computational capacities and energy, such as cryptocurrency services based on blockchain. However, it is hard for mobile devices to run these services due to the limited storage and computational capacity. In this paper, the problem of computation offloading that requires sufficient computing resources with high utilization in large-scale users and multiprovider MEC system was investigated. A mechanism based on the combinatorial double auction, G-TRAP, is proposed in this paper to solve the above problem. In the mechanism, resources are provided both in the cloud and at the edge of the network. Mobile users compete for these resources to offload computing tasks by the rule that the edge-level resources will be allocated at first while cloud-level resources could be the supplement for the edge level. Given that the proof-of-work (PoW), the core issue of blockchain application, is resource-expensive to implement in mobile devices, we provide resource allocation service to users of blockchain application as experimental subjects. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism for serving large-scale users in a short execution time outperforms two existing algorithms in terms of social utility and resource utilization. Consequently, our proposed system can effectively solve the intensive computation offloading problem of mobile blockchain applications.