Incentive Mechanisms for Mobile Edge Computing: Present and Future Directions

Abstract

Mobile edge computing (MEC), as a key enabling technology in 5G, provides distributed computing services for mobile devices to offload their computing-intensive tasks to proximately deployed edge servers. The incentive mechanism is a crucial issue in mobile edge computing with limited resources to stimulate resource sharing among different participants to improve resource utilization and also quality of user experience. Design of efficient incentive mechanisms has attracted a lot of attention, and much work has been carried out. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art incentive mechanisms for MEC systems. We first introduce several fundamental issues in the design of incentive mechanisms and classify existing mechanisms based on different criteria. Then we introduce how each of the existing mechanisms works, and discuss their merits and deficiencies. Finally, we point out some future directions in this area.