Combinatorial double auction for multi-resource trading in IoT applications

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has opened new roads for collaborative distributed applications, particularly in smart city environments, where a variety of resources, including sensing, actuation, computation, and storage, are essential for providing effective location-based services. This paper specifically focuses on the sharing of heterogeneous resources among IoT applications in smart cities. By leveraging game-theoretic principles, this study addresses resource allocation through a combinatorial double auction. The solution is rooted in the concept of Social IoT (SIoT), where Internet-connected objects create dynamic social networks based on rules set by their owners. Social relationships, such as ownership and co-location, are leveraged to form groups offering enhanced reliability resource bundles. The proposed solution offers several key economic properties, including incentive compatibility, individual rationality, and a balanced budget, while maintaining low computational complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed combinatorial double auction mechanism achieves over $$70\%$$ successful resource allocation for up to 1000 requests, maintains computational efficiency with execution times under 30 s, and ensures economic properties such as incentive compatibility and individual rationality, making it a scalable and practical solution for large-scale smart city IoT applications.