Pricing and resource allocation for multimedia social network in cloud environments

Distributed resource allocation is critical for efficient sharing multimedia contents in cloud-based wireless multimedia social network environments. In this paper, a cloud-based multimedia service system architecture is proposed to overcome the limited bandwidth allocation problem in the context of social network, in which bandwidth limited mobile users are allowed to directly acquire live multimedia streaming from the desktop users rather than the cloud based on their social relationships. We also present a theoretical framework for bandwidth allocation from desktop users to mobile users by a dynamic resource pricing process in the proposed bandwidth management system, where price-sensitive users and QoS-sensitive users are considered, and all users target at maximizing their total utilities. Finally, an iterative allocation algorithm is designed to simulate the bandwidth allocation process with respect to shared bandwidth and price. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of our proposed pricing model and allocation algorithm in terms of convergence and efficiency.