Slice Pricing and Access Control with QoS Guarantee for Vehicular Networks

CUI Yaping; ZHANG Feng; WU Dapeng; HE Peng; WANG Ruyan; WANG Pan

doi:10.11999/JEIT251219

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CUI Yaping, ZHANG Feng, WU Dapeng, HE Peng, WANG Ruyan, WANG Pan. Slice Pricing and Access Control with QoS Guarantee for Vehicular Networks[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT251219

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CUI Yaping, ZHANG Feng, WU Dapeng, HE Peng, WANG Ruyan, WANG Pan. Slice Pricing and Access Control with QoS Guarantee for Vehicular Networks[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT251219

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Slice Pricing and Access Control with QoS Guarantee for Vehicular Networks

doi: 10.11999/JEIT251219 cstr: 32379.14.JEIT251219

CUI Yaping^{1, 2, 3
,
,},
ZHANG Feng^{1, 2, 3},
WU Dapeng^{1, 2, 3},
HE Peng^{1, 2, 3},
WANG Ruyan^{1, 2, 3},
WANG Pan^{1, 2, 3}

1.
School of Communications and Information Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China
2.
Advanced Network and Intelligent Connection Technology Key Laboratory of Chongqing Education Commission of China, Chongqing 400065, China
3.
Chongqing Key Laboratory of Ubiquitous Sensing and Networking, Chongqing 400065, China

Funds: National Natural Science Foundation of China (U24A20211, 62271096), Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (KJQN202500603, KJQN202300621), Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (CSTB2025NSCQ-LZX0144, CSTB2024NSCQ-LZX0124, CSTB2023NSCQ-LZX0134), University Innovation Research Group of Chongqing (CxQT20017), Youth Innovation Group Support Program of ICE Discipline of CQUPT (SCIE-QN-2022-04), Sichuan Science and Technology Program (2024YFHZ0093)

Accepted Date: 2026-03-24
Rev Recd Date: 2026-03-24

Available Online: 2026-04-21

Abstract

Abstract

Objective Vehicular applications have diverse Quality of Service (QoS) needs that traditional spectrum-focused networks struggle to meet. While network slicing over Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) offers customized provisioning, current approaches often overlook the holistic generation of slices and adaptive access control. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a two-stage vehicular network slicing framework that integrates resource-aware slice generation with intelligent pricing and access control. This framework enables efficient, dynamic resource allocation and access management, benefiting both the MEC-based Network Slice Provider (MEC-NSP) and vehicles by improving service quality, utilization, and adaptability through a Stackelberg game-based interaction mechanism. Methods The proposed solution features a two-layer coupled mechanism: “resource pre-allocation” and “Stackelberg game pricing and access control”. In the first stage, a 3D resource pre-allocation mechanism jointly optimizes communication, computation, and caching resources to satisfy vehicular latency and bandwidth requirements. This allocation is formulated as a Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) problem and decoupled into uplink and downlink sub-problems, solved via branch-and-bound and interior-point methods, respectively. In the second stage, a Stackelberg game balances the MEC-NSP’s profit and vehicles’ QoS. The MEC-NSP acts as the leader, setting dynamic slice prices, while the network controller (the follower) determines the optimal slice selection probabilities. This interaction is resolved using the Iterative Slice Pricing Algorithm (ISPA), which has been proven to converge to a Nash equilibrium. Results and Discussions Simulations demonstrate that the proposed framework consistently outperforms baseline algorithms (Fixed Slice Pricing, Average Resource Allocation, and Random Selection) under various network conditions. In bandwidth-constrained scenarios, it increases MEC-NSP profit by up to 20.77% compared to the Random Selection approach. With abundant resources (150% capacity), it maintains profit gains of 3–9% over other baselines. The ISPA algorithm exhibits fast convergence to equilibrium (approx. 175 iterations). The flexible pricing mechanism effectively balances network loads, improves cache hit rates, and reduces resource bottlenecks, ensuring high QoS satisfaction. Conclusions The proposed dual-layer framework successfully integrates slice generation and pricing to address resource-aware network slicing in vehicular MEC environments. By coupling 3D resource pre-allocation with a Stackelberg game-based pricing strategy, the system significantly improves MEC-NSP profit, resource utilization, and vehicle QoS. Future work will explore blockchain-based mechanisms to facilitate trust negotiation and decentralized resource orchestration for cross-domain cooperation in multi-operator, multi-vendor environments.
- Vehicular network,
- Network slicing,
- Access control,
- Stackelberg game

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References(24)

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