Fog and Fogonomics

6Incentive Schemes for User‐Provided Fog Infrastructure

George Iosifidis¹, Lin Gao², Jianwei Huang³, and Leandros Tassiulas⁴

¹School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Ireland

²Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China

³School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China

⁴Department of Electrical Engineering, and Institute for Network Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

6.1 Introduction

Today, we are witnessing two important socio‐technological advances that herald the advent of a new era in wireless networks and mobile computing systems. First, the ever increasing needs of users for ubiquitous connectivity and real‐time execution of computing tasks has created an unprecedented pressure to mobile networks and service providers. Second, we see nowadays the proliferation of user‐owned equipment such as Wi‐Fi access points (APs), advanced handheld devices, and various Internet of Things (IoT) devices with enhanced storage and computing capabilities. These devices not only can satisfy the communication and computing needs of their owners but can be also employed to provide related services to nearby users. In this context, each user is transformed to a microservice provider (a host) who may offer Internet access, storage, or computing resources to other users, giving rise to the so‐called user‐provided infrastructures (UPIs).