A dynamic Stackelberg-Cournot game for competitive content caching in 5G networks

The main concept behind 5G mobile network is to expand the idea of small cell network (SCN) to create a cooperative network able to cache data in active nodes inside radio access and Core network. Caching technique is a workaround to deal with bottleneck in the Back-haul, as the capacity of the wireless links could not support the increasing demand for rich multimedia. In this perspective multiple contents providers are in competition for caching space of network operator base stations. In fact, the caching space is a limited resource due to the exponential traffic of mobile data and video consumption. It is in this perspective that mobile operators and contents providers find themselves linked in this market profit generating, and consequently linked also in the allocating cache and setting price issues. In this paper we propose a multi-Stackelberg game between multiple MNOs (leaders) and several CPs (followers) computing under the Cournot-Nash assumption. In the first step a multi-leader Stackelberg game between Multiple MNO, considered as the leaders, aims to define the price they charges the CPs to maximize their profit. In the second step a multi-follower Cournot game between the CPs, considered as the followers, compete to increase the space quantity they cache at the MNOs small base stations (SBS) to maximize also their profit and to improve the quality of service (QoS) of their users. Our goal is to find the price the MNOs will set and the quantity of contents that each CP will cache. In the pricing game, each MNO first sets the price. Then the CPs react with proposed quantities of Space to cache. Then after the MNO sets again an optimal price according to the prediction of each CP0s optimal strategies. Numerical results describe the structure of the Nash equilibrium and the optimal prices resulting from the MNOs and CPs optimal strategies. © 2017 IEEE.