{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,24]],"date-time":"2025-12-24T12:19:57Z","timestamp":1766578797378,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":44,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,16]],"date-time":"2023-05-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1684195200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Special Industrial Technology Research Project of Jilin Province, Research on Self-organizing Network System of Unmanned Platform for Optoelectronic Composite Communication","award":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"]}]},{"name":"\u201cThirteenth Five-Year Plan\u201d of Provincial Science and Technology of Education Department of Jilin Province, Research on Large-scale D2D Access and Traffic Balancing Technology for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks","award":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>An optimal method for resource allocation based on contract theory is proposed to improve energy utilization. In heterogeneous networks (HetNets), distributed heterogeneous network architectures are designed to balance different computing capacities, and MEC server gains are designed based on the amount of allocated computing tasks. An optimal function based on contract theory is developed to optimize the revenue gain of MEC servers while considering constraints such as service caching, computation offloading, and the number of resources allocated. As the objective function is a complex problem, it is solved utilizing equivalent transformations and variations of the reduced constraints. A greedy algorithm is applied to solve the optimal function. A comparative experiment on resource allocation is conducted, and energy utilization parameters are calculated to compare the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and the main algorithm. The results show that the proposed incentive mechanism has a significant advantage in improving the utility of the MEC server.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s23104806","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,17]],"date-time":"2023-05-17T01:58:06Z","timestamp":1684288686000},"page":"4806","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Contract-Optimization Approach (COA): A New Approach for Optimizing Service Caching, Computation Offloading, and Resource Allocation in Mobile Edge Computing Network"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Zhiyao","family":"Sun","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130000, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Guifen","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130000, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6709","DOI":"10.1109\/TVT.2023.3234336","article-title":"Joint service caching and computation offloading scheme based on deep reinforcement learning in vehicular edge computing systems","volume":"72","author":"Xue","year":"2023","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. 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