In³Edge: Interest-Driven Service Incentive Mechanism Based on Stackelberg Game in Edge-Empowered IIoT

The integration of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has markedly improved resource accessibility and propelled digital-intelligent advancements. Nevertheless, the substantial costs of MEC infrastructure also pose critical challenges to incentive mechanism design. Specifically, there is still an absence of a standardized and widely recognized incentive framework for the dynamic and non-cooperative interactions between edge service requesters and providers. Furthermore, the highly complicated characteristics of IIoT necessitate a greater reliance on dependable and trustworthy edge resource provision than other paradigms, which implies that human-centric factors (e.g., credit) are equally crucial as profit-driven metrics (e.g., price) in incentive design. To tackle these challenges, we propose In³Edge, a Stackelberg game-based incentive mechanism that systematically considers the interplay between profit-driven and interest-oriented indicators while accommodating heterogeneous peers, subjective interest divergences, and objective resource disparities. Particularly, leveraging convex optimization theory, we provide rigorous proofs and in-depth analyses of the intrinsic properties of In³Edge, encompassing the concavity/convexity of utility functions, equilibrium solution boundaries, optimal responses under peer/interest heterogeneity, and closed-form solutions for symmetric multipeer scenarios while articulating a series of propositions and theorems to underpin future research. Finally, extensive experiments are constructed under diverse dynamically changing scenarios with distinct characteristics, confirming the strong motivational capabilities of In³Edge in MEC-empowered IIoT.