Game theoretic approaches in mobile cloud computing systems for big data applications: A systematic literature review

The constant technological innovations in wireless communications and network technologies as well as the increasing number of smart mobile devices generate an enormous volume of data stemming from a set of user equipments (UEs). Since an exponential growth of data and analytics is witnessed, new technical and application challenges emerge associated with underlying models that exploit cloud computing technologies, such as the Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) or Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS). In this context, this survey chapter summarizes and establishes to what extend existing research studies have progressed towards applying game theoretic approaches in mobile cloud computing systems for big data applications. We identify and critically evaluate the findings of relevant works addressing this research problem by shedding light on contradictions and gaps in the literature. We therefore propose a cost-benefit model formulation in mobile cloud computing environments and a new game theoretic conceptualization, which accounts for the dynamic storage allocation in cloud systems formulated as a benefit optimization problem. Diverse experimental scenarios are adopted to verify and evaluate the optimality and effectiveness of the developed theory in real-world scenarios.