On an ALOHA game with unknown selfish nodes

In a random access network, a node generally controls its packet transmission according to the specified backoff algorithm. Some nodes may disobey the backoff algorithm and behave selfishly in order to obtain more bandwidth share. In this paper, we consider a scenario where a new node is ready to join a slotted ALOHA-type random access network and has to decide whether he should behave honestly or selfishly without the knowledge of the number of selfish nodes in the network. We first investigate the scenario, where the new node knows how many selfish nodes exist, in view of complete information game theoretic perspective. Then, the results are extended to unknown selfish nodes. Numerical results indicate that selfish behavior is not always amply rewarded and that it provides a selfish node with less payoff than honest behavior in some cases.

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