  We introduce a game-theoretic framework to ex- plore revenue sharing in an
Edge-Cloud computing system, in which computing service providers at the edge
of the Internet (edge providers) and computing service providers at the cloud
(cloud providers) co-exist and collectively provide computing resources to
clients (e.g., end users or applications) at the edge. Different from
traditional cloud computing, the providers in an Edge-Cloud system are
independent and self-interested. To achieve high system-level efficiency, the
manager of the system adopts a task distribution mechanism to maximize the
total revenue received from clients and also adopts a revenue sharing mechanism
to split the received revenue among computing servers (and hence service
providers). Under those system-level mechanisms, service providers attempt to
game with the system in order to maximize their own utilities, by strategically
allocating their resources (e.g., computing servers).
  Our framework models the competition among the providers in an Edge-Cloud
system as a non-cooperative game. Our simulations and experiments on an
emulation system have shown the existence of Nash equilibrium in such a game.
We find that revenue sharing mechanisms have a significant impact on the
system-level efficiency at Nash equilibria, and surprisingly the revenue
sharing mechanism based directly on actual contributions can result in
significantly worse system efficiency than Shapley value sharing mechanism and
Ortmann proportional sharing mechanism. Our framework provides an effective
economics approach to understanding and designing efficient Edge-Cloud
computing systems.
