Incentive-Rewarding Mechanism for Load Balancing under Network Congestion

Due to the popularity of smart device and the improvement of communication technology, data demand increase rapidly. Especially in instant entertainment, for example: stream video or mobile game. Those activities have a great influence in growing data, which leads to network congestion. However, network congestion is not happened continuously in a day, for preference in specific time from users, which becomes peak time. As an example, congestion occurs during transportation time or at night due to lifestyle of majority. Instead of infrastructure, which have a high cost and risk. ISP would like to overcome the problem with an economic method. Our research proposed a method that consider peak time and off peak time difference and preference from the users with incentive mechanism in solving network congestion problem. A mathematical model is created to describe the situation and game theory is used in further calculation for ISP’s optimal reward and user’s optimal usage allocation rate. In consequence, total utility (social welfare) can be improved under the proposed incentive mechanism with optimal reward and usage allocation rate.