Stackelberg-Game Computation Offloading Scheme for Parked Vehicle-Assisted VEC and Experiment Analysis

Vehicle edge computing (VEC) offers users low-latency and high-reliability services by using computational resources at the network's edge. Nevertheless, because of inadequate infrastructure and limited resources, computation-intensive and delay-sensitive vehicle applications cannot be performed efficiently at the edge. Therefore, several studies have used the idle resources of parked vehicles to assist in computation offloading. In this paper, we propose a parked vehicle-assisted vehicle edge computing architecture considering multi-agent collaboration, including intelligent vehicles and edge servers. Additionally, we propose a framework for a parallel Internet of Vehicles (IoV) utilizing computational experiment. The service provider is assigned the role of owning VEC resources and recruiting parking vehicle resources. The model was constructed by using the resource consumption-service relationship of both offloading parties to ensure service quality. First, a Stackelberg game model was constructed based on the interaction between requesting vehicles and a service provider. The latter was the leader, and the requesting vehicles were the followers. The Nash equilibrium for optimal pricing and offloading allocations was attained and verified, and a distributed gradient-based equilibrium algorithm was designed to solve the Stackelberg game model and obtain the final decision through mutual communication. The method also protects the privacy of participants and respects the willingness of requesting vehicles to offload. Finally, the simulation experiments confirmed that the proposed algorithm can achieve game equilibrium. Furthermore, it outperformed state-of-the-art algorithms in improving the service provider's utility.