COMMIT: A Sender-Centric Truthful and Energy-Efficient Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we consider the problem of establishing a route and sending packets between a source/destination pair in ad hoc networks composed of rational selfish nodes,whose purpose is to maximize their own utility. In order to motivate nodes to follow the protocol specification, we use side payments that are made to the forwarding nodes. Our goal is to design a fully distributed algorithm such that: (i)a node is alwais better off participating in the protocol execution (individual rationality), and (ii) a node is always better off behaving according to the protocol specification (truthfulness). Furthemore, we require that messages are routed along the most energy-efficienth path. We introduce the COMMIT protocol for individually rational, truthful, and energy efficient routing in ad hoc networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ad hoc routing protocol with these features. COMMIT exchanges at most O((|M|^2)*d) messages to find the optimal route, where |M|<= n-2, n is the number of network nodes, and d is the maximum node degree in the communication graph. As anaside, our work demonstrates the advantage of using a cross-layer approach to solving problems: leveraging the exitence of an underlyng topology control, and to reduce its message complessity. On the other hand, our investigation of the routing problem in presence of selfish nodes disclosed a new metric under which topology control protocols can be evaluated: the cost of cooperation

Cooperation Enforcement for Packet Forwarding Optimization in Multi-hop Ad-hoc Networks

Ad-hoc networks are independent of any infrastructure. The nodes are autonomous and make their own decisions. They also have limited energy resources. Thus, a node tends to behave selfishly when it is asked to forward the packets of other nodes. Indeed, it would rather choose to reject a forwarding request in order to save its energy. To overcome this problem, the nodes need to be motivated to cooperate. To this end, we propose a self-learning repeated game framework to enforce cooperation between the nodes of a network. This framework is inspired by the concept of "The Weakest Link" TV game. Each node has a utility function whose value depends on its cooperation in forwarding packets on a route as well as the cooperation of all the nodes that form this same route. The more these nodes cooperate the higher is their utility value. This would establish a cooperative spirit within the nodes of the networks. All the nodes will then more or less equally participate to the forwarding tasks which would then eventually guarantee a more efficient packets forwarding from sources to respective destinations. Simulations are run and the results show that the proposed framework efficiently enforces nodes to cooperate and outperforms two other self-learning repeated game frameworks which we are interested in.Comment: Published in the proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC 2012), Paris, France, 201

An Optimal Game Theoretical Framework for Mobility Aware Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Selfish behaviors are common in self-organized Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) where nodes belong to different authorities. Since cooperation of nodes is essential for routing protocols, various methods have been proposed to stimulate cooperation among selfish nodes. In order to provide sufficient incentives, most of these methods pay nodes a premium over their actual costs of participation. However, they lead to considerably large overpayments. Moreover, existing methods ignore mobility of nodes, for simplicity. However, owing to the mobile nature of MANETs, this assumption seems unrealistic. In this paper, we propose an optimal game theoretical framework to ensure the proper cooperation in mobility aware routing for MANETs. The proposed method is based on the multi-dimensional optimal auctions which allows us to consider path durations, in addition to the route costs. Path duration is a metric that best reflects changes in topology caused by mobility of nodes and, it is widely used in mobility aware routing protocols. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism is optimal in that it minimizes the total expected payments. We provide theoretical analysis to support our claims. In addition, simulation results show significant improvements in terms of payments compared to the most popular existing methods

Enhancing Node Cooperation in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with Selfish Nodes

In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), nodes depend on each other for routing and forwarding packets. However, to save power and other resources, nodes belonging to independent authorities may behave selfishly, and may not be willing to help other nodes. Such selfish behavior poses a real threat to the proper functioning of MANETs. One way to foster node cooperation is to introduce punishment for selfish nodes. Based on neighbor-monitoring techniques, a fully distributed solution to detect, punish, and re-admit selfish nodes, is proposed here. This solution provides nodes the same opportunity to serve/and be served by others. A light-weight solution regarding battery status is also proposed here. This solution requires neighbor monitoring only when necessary, thereby saving nodes battery power. Another effective way to solve the selfish-node problem is to reward nodes for their service according to their cost. To force nodes to show their true cost, truthful protocols are needed. A low overhead truthful routing protocol to find optimal routes is proposed in this thesis. The most prominent feature of this protocol is the reduction of overhead from existing solutions O(n3) to O(n2). A light-weight scalable truthful routing protocol (LSTOP) is further proposed, which finds near-least-cost paths in dense networks. LSTOP reduces overhead to O(n) on average, and O(n2) in worst case scenarios. Multiple path routing protocols are an effective alternative to single path routing protocols. A generic mechanism that can turn any table-driven multipath routing protocol into a truthful one, is outlined here. A truthful multipath routing protocol (TMRP), based on well-known AOMDV protocol, is presented as an example. TMRP incurs an only 2n message overhead for a route discovery, and can also achieve load balancing without compromising truthfulness. To cope with the selfish-node problem in the area of position-based routing, a truthful geographic forwarding (TGF) algorithm is presented. TGF utilizes three auction-based forwarding schemes to stimulate node cooperation. The truthfulness of these schemes is proven, and their performance is evaluated through statistical analysis and simulation studies

Auction-based schemes for multipath routing in selfish networks

We study multipath routing with traffic assignment in selfish networks. Based on the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction, an optimal and strategy-proof scheme, known as optimal auction-based multipath routing (OAMR), is developed. However, OAMR is computationally expensive and cannot run in real time when the network size is large. Therefore, we propose sequential auction-based multipath routing (SAMR). SAMR handles routing requests sequentially using some greedy strategies. In particular, with reference to the Ausubel auction, we develop a water-draining algorithm to assign the traffic of a request among its available paths and determine the payment of the transmission in approximately constant time. Our simulation results show that SAMR can rapidly compute the allocations and payments of requests with small sacrifice on the system cost. Moreover, various sequencing strategies for sequential auction are also investigated. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

A Game Theory-Based Obstacle Avoidance Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

The obstacle avoidance problem in geographic forwarding is an important issue for location-based routing in wireless sensor networks. The presence of an obstacle leads to several geographic routing problems such as excessive energy consumption and data congestion. Obstacles are hard to avoid in realistic environments. To bypass obstacles, most routing protocols tend to forward packets along the obstacle boundaries. This leads to a situation where the nodes at the boundaries exhaust their energy rapidly and the obstacle area is diffused. In this paper, we introduce a novel routing algorithm to solve the obstacle problem in wireless sensor networks based on a game-theory model. Our algorithm forms a concave region that cannot forward packets to achieve the aim of improving the transmission success rate and decreasing packet transmission delays. We consider the residual energy, out-degree and forwarding angle to determine the forwarding probability and payoff function of forwarding candidates. This achieves the aim of load balance and reduces network energy consumption. Simulation results show that based on the average delivery delay, energy consumption and packet delivery ratio performances our protocol is superior to other traditional schemes

Truthful resource management in wireless ad hoc networks

In wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), cooperation cannot be an im- plicit assumption anymore. Each profit-oriented network node has the intention to be selfish due to limited resource possession. In this dissertation, we investigate the truthful resource management that induces network nodes to reveal true information and stimulate cooperation. We propose the Transmission Power Recursive Auction Mechanism routing pro- tocol (TEAM) and the Truthful Topology Control mechanism (TRUECON) to cope with the selfish intention and achieve resource effciency in a non-cooperative envi- ronment. We prove both are strategy-proof and have some theoretic bounds on the performance. Compared with the existing routing protocols and topology control al- gorithms, TEAM and TRUECON are more effcient when dealing with the selfishness in MANETs. We conduct a study on anonymity enhancement in MANETs by reducing trans- mission power of network nodes. A routing protocol - Whisper is presented. Simu- lation results show that it has desirable properties in terms of anonymity and power effciency

Game theory for collaboration in future networks

Cooperative strategies have the great potential of improving network performance and spectrum utilization in future networking environments. This new paradigm in terms of network management, however, requires a novel design and analysis framework targeting a highly flexible networking solution with a distributed architecture. Game Theory is very suitable for this task, since it is a comprehensive mathematical tool for modeling the highly complex interactions among distributed and intelligent decision makers. In this way, the more convenient management policies for the diverse players (e.g. content providers, cloud providers, home providers, brokers, network providers or users) should be found to optimize the performance of the overall network infrastructure. The authors discuss in this chapter several Game Theory models/concepts that are highly relevant for enabling collaboration among the diverse players, using different ways to incentivize it, namely through pricing or reputation. In addition, the authors highlight several related open problems, such as the lack of proper models for dynamic and incomplete information games in this area.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

A Framework for Incentive Compatible Topology Control in Non-Cooperative Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

In this paper we consider the problem of building and maintaining a network topology with certain desirable features in a wireless multi-hop network where nodes behave like selfish agents. We first provide examples showing that existing topology control approaches are not resilient to strategic node behavior, indicating the need of considering possible selfish node behavior at the design stage. Given this observation, we propose a general framework that can be used as a guideline in the design of incentive compatible topology control protocols. As examples of application of our framework to specific topology control protocols, we present incentive compatible distributed algorithms for building the minimum spanning tree (MST) and the k-closest neighbors graph, which are very well-known topology control approaches. To the best of our knowledge, the ones presented in this paper are the first incentive compatible realizations of topology control presented in the literature