# Joint Pricing, Server Orchestration and Network Slice Deployment in Mobile Edge Computing Networks
## 6 Performance Evaluation
### Performance Comparison  
In this section, we will test the performance of PD-JSOSD under \(M=3\), \(N=2\) and introduce the following schemes as comparisons:  
* **WOP-JSOSD**, which is used to highlight the importance of pricing optimization. During the training, the IPL uses a randomized pricing scheme, while the NPL and the RAL use the same algorithms as PD-JSOSD. * **PD-AAS-SD**, which is used to highlight the importance of optimizing MEC server orchestration. In the NPL, all MEC servers are activated and associated with the base station at their locations. The NPL only needs to decide on the access function deployment variable x. Additionally, the IPL and the RAL use the same algorithms as PD-JSOSD. Figure 8: Convergence process of the NPL and RAL with different number of slices (\(M=3\)). (a) \(N=1\); (b) \(N=2\); (c) \(N=3\). * **PD-SO-MSNR**, which is used to highlight the importance of optimizing subareas association. In the RAL, the users in each subarea are associated with the base station with the largest SNR, and accordingly, the access function deployment variable x in the NPL is obtained. Moreover, the IPL and the NPL use the same algorithms as PD-JSOSD. * **PD-JSP2**[11], which is used to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed JSOSD. The NPL and the RAL adopt the scheme in [11], which also optimized the server orchestration and the service deployment issues, but there are some shortcomings in the adopted approach. Specifically, ref. [11] fixed the number of activated servers and used the _k-means_ clustering to decide which server is activated and its association with base stations. The same scheme as in PD-SO-MSNR is then used to decide the subarea association and access function deployment scheme. Additionally, the IPL uses the same algorithm as PD-JSOSD. All results are taken as the mean of the results of 1000 experiments. In view of the utility equation of the IPL, we present the revenue of the IPL, the number of activated servers, and the utility of the IPL in Figure 9. The results and analysis are summarized as follows:  
* **Number of Activation Servers:** Because PD-AAS-SD activates all servers and PD-JSP2 fixes the number of activated servers, the numbers of activated servers remain the same for both of them. As the network load rises, WOP-JSOSD, PD-SO-MSNR and PD-JSOSD require more servers to provide service, so the numbers of activated servers in these schemes increase accordingly. It is worth mentioning that when the maximum number of users is small, the changes in WOP-JSOSD, PD-SD-MSNR and PD-JSOSD are not significant. This is because the network load is very low, and one or two servers are enough to cope with all the demands. In terms of results, the access function of each slice in PD-SO-MSNR is deployed in all base stations, so PD-SO-MSNR has enough bandwidth resources as well as low access delay when the network load is low. That means PD-SO-MSNR can activate fewer servers to meet the delay demand, so the number of activated servers in PD-SO-MSNR is lower. However, PD-SO-MSNR adopts the max-SNR principle to determine user associations without load balancing, so as the number of users increases, the competition for resources in PD-SO-MSNR becomes intense. At this point, more servers need to be activated to meet the delay demand, which is why the curve of PD-SO-MSNR rises rapidly in the later part. * **Revenue of the IPL:** Both PD-JSP2 and PD-SO-MSNR use the max-SNR principle to determine the deployment scheme of access functions, and thus, the deployment cost is high. In addition, PD-JSP2 fixes the association between base stations and servers, which implies that the number of deployed VNF chains is fixed, and thus, the variation of PD-JSP2 is smaller than that of PD-SO-MSNR. Compared with WOP-JSOSD, the IPL has more revenue in JSOSD, which proves that the proposed IPL-dominated Stackelberg game can effectively improve the revenue of the IPL. * **Utility of the IPL:** The number of activated servers and IPL's revenue together determine the utility of the IPL.