Service-Oriented Resource Allocation for Blockchain-Empowered Mobile Edge Computing

Integrating dense small cell (DSC) networks with mobile edge computing is employed by 5G to tackle the contradiction between the computation limitations of user equipment (UE) and the stringent latency requirement of services. This paper investigates the service-oriented edge resource allocation problem in DSC networks, determining where to deploy the service entity, how many service entities should be deployed at each edge cloud, and how to assign the UEs to service entities. The problem is challenging for the following three aspects: 1) Service entity deployment and UE assignment are highly coupled. 2) Due to the overlap of coverage regions of densely deployed small cells, the allocation mechanism of different base stations has mutual effects on the overall service performance. 3) Considering the limited resources of edge clouds, it is a thorny problem to encourage edge clouds to cache and share service startup images. We devote the following efforts to tackle the problem under these challenges. First, we explore blockchain’s decentralized, traceable, and secure characteristics, and propose a scheme to encourage image sharing in mobile edge computing. Second, we formulate the service-oriented edge resource allocation as mixed integer non-linear programming. Third, towards the target of reducing the computational complexity, we decouple UE assignment from service entity deployment and solve it through Gibbs sampling. Moreover, the power of Lyapunov optimization and convex optimization is incorporated to reduce the long-term power consumption and budget. Experiment results demonstrate the superiority of our approach over current notable solutions.