A distributed key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using identity-based cryptography

In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient key establishment scheme designed with respect to the unique requirements of Wireless Mesh Networks. Our security model is based on Identity-based key establishment scheme without the utilization of a trusted authority for private key operations. Rather, this task is performed by a collaboration of users; a threshold number of users come together in a coalition so that they generate the private key. We performed simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the network size and the threshold value. Results show a tradeoff between resiliency and efficiency: increasing the threshold value or the number of mesh nodes also increases the resiliency but negatively effects the efficiency. For threshold values smaller than 8 and for number of mesh nodes in between 40 and 100, at least 90% of the mesh nodes can compute their private keys within at most 70 seconds. On the other hand, at threshold value 8, an increase in the number of mesh nodes from 40 to 100 results in 25% increase in the rate of successful private key generations

Equivalence of Resource/Opportunity Egalitarianism and Welfare Egalitarianism in Quasilinear Domains

We study the allocation of indivisible goods when monetary transfers are possible and preferences are quasilinear. We show that the only allocation mechanism (upto Pareto-indifference) that satisfies the axioms supporting resource and opportunity egalitarianism is the one that equalizes the welfares. We present alternative characterizations, and budget properties of this mechanism and discuss how it would ensure fair compensation in government requisitions and condemnations.egalitarianism, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, distributive justice, allocation of indivisible goods and money, fair auctions, the Groves mechanisms, strategy-proofness, population monotonicity, cost monotonicity, government requisitions, eminent domain

Axiomatizing Political Philosophy of Distributive Justice: Equivalence of No-envy and Egalitarian-equivalence with Welfare-egalitarianism

We characterize welfare-egalitarian mechanisms (that are decision-efficient and incentive compatible) with the two fundamental axioms of fairness: no-envy and egalitarian-equivalence. We consider cases where agents have equal rights over external world resources but are individually responsible for their preferences/costs. Our characterization answers the political philosophy question of what kind of welfare differentials allowed if we respect private ownership rights over self and public ownership over external world. We also relate no-envy and egalitarian-equivalence to "equality of what" debate and build a link between resource and opportunity egalitarianism, and welfare-egalitarianism.egalitarianism, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, distributive justice, equality of opportunity, resource egalitarianism, private ownership of the self and public ownership of external world, NIMBY problems, allocation of indivisible goods and money, discrete public goods, strategy-proofness.

Appointment Games in Fixed-Route Traveling Salesman Problems and the Shapley Value

Starting from her home, a service provider visits several customers, following a predetermined route, and returns home after all customers are visited. The problem is to find a fair allocation of the total cost of this tour among the customers served. A transferable-utility cooperative game can be associated with this cost allocation problem. We introduce a new class of games, which we refer as the fixed-route traveling salesman games with appointments. We study the Shapley Value in this class and show that it is in the core. Our first characterization of the Shapley value involves a property which requires that sponsors do not benefit from mergers, or splitting into a set of sponsors. Our second theorem involves a property which requires that the cost shares of two sponsors who get connected are equally effected. We also show that except for our second theorem, none of our results for appointment games extend to the class of routing games (Potters et al, 1992).fixed-route traveling salesman games, routing games, appointment games, the Shapley value, the core, transferable-utility games, merging and splitting proofness, equal impact, networks, cost allocation.

Characterizing the Shapley Value in Fixed-Route Traveling Salesman Problems with Appointments

Starting from her home, a service provider visits several customers, following a predetermined route, and returns home after all customers are visited. The problem is to ?nd a fair allocation of the total cost of this tour among the customers served. A transferable-utility cooperative game can be associated with this cost allocation problem. We intro- duce a new class of games, which we refer as the fixed-route traveling salesman games with appointments. We characterize the Shapley Value in this class using a property which requires that sponsors do not bene?t from mergers, or splitting into a set of sponsors.Fixed-route travelling salesman games, routing games, appointment games, the Shapley value, the core, transferable-utility games, merging and splitting proofness, networks, cost allocation

Characterizing Welfare-egalitarian Mechanisms with Solidarity When Valuations are Private Information

In the problem of assigning indivisible goods and monetary transfers, we characterize welfare-egalitarian mechanisms (that are decision-efficient and incentive compatible) with an axiom of solidarity under preference changes and a fair ranking axiom of order preservation. This result is in line with characterizations of egalitarian rules with solidarity in other economic models. We also show that we can replace order-preservation with egalitarian-equivalence or no-envy (on the subadditive domain) and still characterize the welfare-egalitarian class. We show that, in the model we consider, the welfare-egalitarian mechanisms appear to be the best candidates to satisfy several different fairness and solidarity requirements as well as generating bounded deficits.egalitarianism, solidarity, order preservation, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, distributive justice, NIMBY problems, imposition of tasks, allocation of indivisible (public) goods and money, the Groves mechanisms, strategy-proofness

Welfare Bounds in a Growing Population

We study the allocation of collectively owned indivisible goods when monetary transfers are possible. We restrict our attention to incentive compatible mechanisms which allocate the goods efficiently. Among these mechanisms, we characterize those that respect welfare lower bounds. The main characterization involves the identical-preferences lower-bound: each agent should be at least as well off as in an hypothetical economy where all agents have the same preference as hers, no agent envies another, and the budget is balanced. This welfare lower-bound grants agents equal rights/responsibilities over the jointly owned resources but insures agents against the heterogeneity in preferences. We also study the implications of imposing variable population axioms together with welfare bounds.collective ownership, allocation of indivisible goods and money, NIMBY problems, imposition of tasks, the Groves mechanisms, the identical-preferences lower-bound, individual rationality, the stand-alone lower-bound, k-fairness, population monotonicity