A pricing strategy for job allocation in mobile grids using a non-cooperative bargaining theory framework

Due to the inherent limitations in computational, storage, battery power and wireless communications capability, mobile devices have not yet been widely integrated into the Grid computing platforms. However, given that millions of laptops, PDAs and other portable devices remain unused most of the time, this huge repository of resources can be potentially utilized leading to what is called a mobile grid environment. In this paper, we propose a game theoretic pricing strategy for efficient job allocation in mobile grids. By drawing upon the Nash bargaining solution, we show how to derive a unified framework for addressing such issues as network efficiency, fairness, utility maximization, and pricing. In particular, we characterize a two-player, non-cooperative, alternating-offer bargaining game between the Wireless Access Point Server and the mobile devices to determine a fair pricing strategy which is then used to effectively allocate jobs to the mobile devices with a goal to maximize the revenue for the grid users. Simulation results show that the proposed job allocation scheme is comparable to other load balancing schemes in terms of the overall system response time.