NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Foundation and Design Framework for Incentives and Efficiency of Mobile Crowd Service Systems

智能移动设备(如智能手机)的最新进展使许多功能强大的应用和服务成为可能，从根本上改变了我们的生活、工作、娱乐和相互交流的方式。该项目调查了一系列新兴和快速增长的智能移动应用，例如基于智能手机的协作流和数据共享、基于邻近的动态移动云、移动设备到设备计算以及机会主义网络。在这些应用中，服务由移动用户提供和消费，通过这些用户形成的人群，以及通过服务提供商和转售商的处理和销售/转售。该项目为支持这些应用的移动人群服务(MCS)系统引入了一个有效的设计框架。该框架提供了激励所有用户和服务提供商公平参与此类系统的机制，这对智能移动应用的持续成功、更广泛的采用和进一步创新至关重要。研究结果将对我们日常生活的许多方面产生重大影响，这些方面已经渗透到智能移动设备和应用程序中，并将与强大的教育组件相结合，包括课程开发、学生培训、招收和吸引未被充分代表的学生。该项目为开发实用算法和架构提供了理论基础和设计范例，这些算法和架构可以在完整的MCS生态系统中有效管理服务提供商、经销商和移动用户之间的互动。该项目首先设计了一套动态算法，以激励用户真实和公平地参与主要由动态移动用户组成的基于邻近的MCS系统。对于所有参与者之间的交互主导系统动态和性能的系统，该项目开发了一个优化公式，以实现整体系统的效率和稳定性。此外，该项目还调查了玩家可能为了获得利益而与系统进行游戏的情景。在合作环境下，该项目通过服务提供商及其经销商的合作博弈模型设计了公平的收入分享机制。对于所有参与者都是自利但理性地与系统进行博弈的情况，本项目开发了一个静态分析的非合作博弈和一个动态分析的流体模型。该研究考虑到移动通信的特点，涵盖了广泛的MCS系统，这些系统具有动态的用户移动模式、不同的用户类型和服务质量以及分布式和异步的计算需求。该项目是基于智能移动设备的移动联网系统和应用程序设计方面的重大进步。

Recent advances in smart mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) have enabled many powerful applications and services, fundamentally changing the way we live, work, entertain, and communicate with each other. The project investigates a broad range of emerging and fast-growing smart mobile applications, such as smartphone-based cooperative streaming and data sharing, proximity-based dynamic mobile clouds, mobile device-to-device computing, and opportunistic networking. In those applications, services are provided and consumed by mobile users, through the crowds formed by those users, and through the processing and selling/reselling by service providers and resellers. The project introduces an effective design framework for mobile crowd service (MCS) systems that support those applications. The framework provides mechanisms to incentivize all users and service providers to fairly participate in such systems, which are crucial to the continuing success, wider adoption, and further innovation of smart mobile applications. The outcome of the research will have a significant impact on many aspects of our daily lives that are already permeated by smart mobile devices and applications, and will be integrated with a strong education component including curriculum development, student training, recruiting and engaging underrepresented students.The project develops a theoretic foundation and design paradigms for developing practical algorithms and architecture that effectively manage the interplay between service providers, resellers, and mobile users in a complete MCS ecosystem. The project first designs a set of dynamic algorithms to incentivize users to truthfully and fairly participate in the proximity-based MCS systems that are formed mainly by dynamic mobile users. For systems where the interaction among all players dominates system dynamics and performance, the project develops an optimization formulation to achieve overall system efficiency and stability. Furthermore, the project investigates scenarios where players might game with the system in order to gain benefit. In a cooperative setting, the project designs a fair revenue sharing mechanism through a cooperative game model of a service provider and its resellers. For the case where all players self-interestedly but rationally game with the system, the project develops a non-cooperative game for static analysis, and a fluid model for dynamic analysis. The research takes into consideration the characteristics of mobile communications, and covers a broad range of MCS systems characterized by their dynamic user mobility patterns, heterogeneous user types and service quality, and distributed and asynchronous computation requirements. This project constitutes a significant advance in the design of mobile networked systems and applications based on smart mobile devices.