A Strongly Group Strategyproof and Shill Resistant Bargaining Mechanism for Fog Resource Pricing

Whereas there are group strategyproof mechanisms for a variety of problems, to date, group strategyproof bargaining has not been studied. Although shill bidding is widely studied in auctions, there is currently no work that analyzes the effect of shills on bargaining mechanisms. This paper validates that Sim’s agent-based fog bargaining (AFB) mechanism is both 1) strongly group strategyproof (i.e., it is more robust than existing group strategyproof mechanisms) and 2) shill resistant. Since Internet-based agents can coordinate themselves to shade (respectively, mark up) resource prices, bargaining mechanisms that are resistant to coordinated price shading (respectively, markup) by coalitions of agents are crucial in price bargaining between fog node owners and Internet-connected device owners. Mathematical proofs validate that the AFB mechanism is strongly group strategyproof because on top of satisfying the commonly adopted condition of group strategyproofness, i.e., coordinated price shading (respectively, markup) by coalitions of agents that results in the strict gain of some agent will also result in the strict loss of another agent, it also satisfies two additional stronger conditions that 1) there is no collusive surplus from coordinated price shading (respectively, markup) and 2) every agent cannot increase his/her utility by joining a coalition. Given the ease for agents to fake identities in the Internet, shill resistance is another critically important property of fog bargaining mechanisms. Mathematical evidence validates that coordinated price shading (respectively, markup) by coalitions with shills is not feasible in the AFB mechanism.