An economics-based negotiation scheme among mobile devices in mobile grid

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an economics-based distributed negotiation scheme among mobile devices in mobile grid. In our model, there are energy negotiation and transactions between buyer devices and seller devices. Dynamic allocation of energy resources in mobile grid is performed through online transactions within markets. Mobile devices can be sellers and buyers that use optimization algorithms to maximize predefined utility functions during their transactions. Seller device agents sell the underlying energy resources of the mobile device. Buyer device agent makes buying decisions within the budget constraints to acquire energy resources. An economics-based negotiation algorithm among mobile devices is proposed. The proposed algorithm decomposes mobile grid system optimization problem into a sequence of two sub-problems. In the simulation, the performance evaluation of economics-based negotiation algorithm is evaluated.

Introduction

Conventionally, a grid environment consists of an aggregation of networked computers forming a scale-distributed system that can be exploited to solve computational and data intensive problems. Most of grid environment do not take mobile devices into consideration, for next generation Grids to be truly pervasive and mobile, we need to allow for the integration of mobile devices, and in order to leverage available resources and broaden the range of supplied services. Mobile devices are often resource limited: processing power is low, battery life is finite, and storage space is constrained. These restrictions slow application execution, and hinder operability. The use of mobile devices in grid environments may have two interaction aspects: devices are considered as users of grid resources or as grid resources providers. Due to the limitation constraints on energy and processing capacity of mobile devices, their integration into the Grid as resource providers and not just consumers is very difficult [1], [6], [7], [12]. In order to fully integrate mobile devices to mobile grid, it is important to exploit services in mobile devices to support mobile services in mobile grid where mobile devices can be both consumers and providers of services. Such integration could open up interesting possibilities in exploiting the mobile nature of these devices in grid computing environment. Currently, seldom research focuses on mobile devices as resource providers in mobile grid environment. In this paper, we consider mobile devices acting as both resource providers and consumers.

Limiting the energy consumption of mobile devices is an important objective in mobile system. The capabilities of mobile devices are limited by their modest sizes and the finite lifetimes of the batteries that power them. As a result, minimizing the energy usage in mobile devices continues to pose significant challenges in mobile grid. In mobile grid, mobile devices are usually battery-driven. A limited energy budget restricts the computation and communication capacity of mobile device. In mobile grid, energy resources distribution and computation workloads are not balanced within mobile devices. Some mobile devices have spare energy; some mobile devices are energy exhausted. Devices that expend all their energy can only be recharged when they leave the network. Therefore, it is beneficial to redistribute spare energy resources to satisfy unevenly distributed workloads. If a mobile device can't execute tasks that are too computation and power intensive, the mobile device can transfer these tasks to devices with spare energy and time. So, mobile devices need interactions between each other to complete the task, both mobile buyer devices and mobile seller devices benefit from collaborations.

In this paper, we investigate the cooperation among mobile devices to balance the energy consumption and computation workloads in mobile grid. Mobile devices can have different roles such as energy buyers and sellers. In the mobile grid, the energies of mobile devices are uneven, energy-poor devices can exploit other devices with spare energy. Grid jobs are transferred between devices via economics-based distributed negotiation scheme. When additional energy is required, buyer devices and seller devices negotiate energy prices within grid markets. Buyer devices pay seller devices for energy consumption to complete jobs. Our model consists of two actors: A buyer device agent represents a mobile device that intends to purchase energy from other devices. A seller device agent represents a mobile device that is willing to sell spare energy to other devices. The objective of optimal energy allocation in mobile grid is to maximize the utility of the system without exceeding the energy capacity, expense budget and the deadline. For example, in mobile grid, a mobile client PDA, laptop etc. runs a streaming multimedia application such as MPEG player while traversing a series of cells (in a cellular network), and it can receive video streams from various grid resource providers including laptops. When some laptops with little energy receive requests for video streams from client, they will act as buyer device agents and pay other laptops with spare energy to execute tasks for them. The laptops earning money from other buyers are seller device agents.

To our knowledge, in the research area of the integration of mobile devices into the Grid, this is the first solution that uses an economics-based approach for balancing the energy consumption among mobile devices that act as both resource providers and consumers in mobile grid.

The rest of the paper is structured as followings. Section 2 discusses the related works. Section 3 presents an economics-based distributed negotiation scheme among mobile devices in mobile grid. Section 4 describes the algorithm. In Section 5, the experiments are conducted and discussed. Section 6 gives the conclusions to the paper.