A 3-player protocol preventing persistence in strategic contention with limited feedback

In this paper, we study contention resolution protocols from a game-theoretic perspective. In a recent work, we considered acknowledgment-based protocols, where a user gets feedback from the channel only when she attempts transmission. In this case she will learn whether her transmission was successful or not. One of the main results of ESA2016 was that no acknowledgment-based protocol can be in equilibrium. In fact, it seems that many natural acknowledgment-based protocols fail to prevent users from unilaterally switching to persistent protocols that always transmit with probability 1. It is therefore natural to ask how powerful a protocol must be so that it can beat persistent deviators. In this paper we consider age-based protocols, which can be described by a sequence of probabilities of transmitting in each time step. Those probabilities are given beforehand and do not change based on the transmission history. We present a 3-player age-based protocol that can prevent users from unilaterally deviating to a persistent protocol in order to decrease their expected transmission time. It is worth noting that the answer to this question does not follow from the results and proof ideas of ESA2016. Our protocol is non-trivial, in the sense that, when all players use it, finite expected transmission time is guaranteed. In fact, we show that this protocol is preferable to any deadline protocol in which, after some fixed time, attempt transmission with probability 1 in every subsequent step. An advantage of our protocol is that it is very simple to describe, and users only need a counter to keep track of time. Whether there exist $n$-player age-based protocols that do not use counters and can prevent persistence is left as an open problem for future research.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1606.0658

Collaboration Enforcement In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) have attracted great research interest in recent years. Among many issues, lack of motivation for participating nodes to collaborate forms a major obstacle to the adoption of MANETs. Many contemporary collaboration enforcement techniques employ reputation mechanisms for nodes to avoid and penalize malicious participants. Reputation information is propagated among participants and updated based on complicated trust relationships to thwart false accusation of benign nodes. The aforementioned strategy suffers from low scalability and is likely to be exploited by adversaries. To address these problems, we first propose a finite state model. With this technique, no reputation information is propagated in the network and malicious nodes cannot cause false penalty to benign hosts. Misbehaving node detection is performed on-demand; and malicious node punishment and avoidance are accomplished by only maintaining reputation information within neighboring nodes. This scheme, however, requires that each node equip with a tamper-proof hardware. In the second technique, no such restriction applies. Participating nodes classify their one-hop neighbors through direct observation and misbehaving nodes are penalized within their localities. Data packets are dynamically rerouted to circumvent selfish nodes. In both schemes, overall network performance is greatly enhanced. Our approach significantly simplifies the collaboration enforcement process, incurs low overhead, and is robust against various malicious behaviors. Simulation results based on different system configurations indicate that the proposed technique can significantly improve network performance with very low communication cost

A human rights approach to the economic analysis of bureaucratic corruption

The traditional arena of human rights discourse and practice made little or no allowance for the rapidly growing international phenomenon of bureaucratic corruption.1 In the recent past, states have consistently maintained that bureaucratic corruption, on the basis of the norm of non-intervention, was strictly a domestic issue and thus outside the competence of international bodies2, such as the United Nations. This is no longer the case, for states have now gradually come to grips with the realization that bureaucratic corruption is a debilitating governmental anomaly that admits of no national boundaries, and assaults the social, economic and cultural integrity of all nations, albeit at varying degrees of intensity3. The vast literature on corruption approaches its incidence and effects almost invariably from a political and economic perspective, and rightly conclude that where prevalent, social welfare suffers in terms of anemic economic growth and diminished opportunities4. A new approach in analyzing the effects of bureaucratic corruption that looks beyond the traditional areas of inquiry is now, more than ever, imperative. It is here argued that the traditional approach is too limited, and fails to recognize the broader social impact of corruption on individuals and collectivities. This work, therefore, adopts a rights-based approach to the analysis of bureaucratic corruption and its effects on fundamental human rights. The thesis here espoused is that bureaucratic corruption, where endemic and sustained, leads to suppressions of human rights through its damaging effects on economic development. It is further posited that when states, cognizant of prevalent corruptive practices, either fail to take preventive measures or tacitly encourage its observance, are derelict in their duties and the obligations assumed as signatories to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).Applied Economics, bureaucratic corruption, human rights