Vertical Integration of Incentives for Cooperation Inter-layer Collaboration as a Prerequisite for Eectively Stimulating Cooperation in Ad Hoc Networks

In ad hoc networks, devices must cooperate in order to compensate for the absence of infrastructure. Yet, autonomous devices are free to decide whether to cooperate or not. Hence, incentives are indispensable to induce cooperation between autonomous devices. Recently, several incentive schemes have been proposed. Each of them is focussed on incentives for cooperation on a specific protocol layer. In this paper, we demonstrate the ineffectiveness of such isolated incentive schemes and point out the need for vertical integration. Therefore, vertical interaction of protocol entities is augmented by exchanging the state of different layers’ incentive schemes. This builds the foundation of a generic model of stimulated cooperation that captures inter-device cooperation and interlayer interaction in the presence of incentives for cooperation. The proposed model is exemplified and its concept of localizing resource consumption is illustrated. We examine the applicability of the model to existing protocols and incentive schemes by considering three dimensions of heterogeneity and discussing implementation issues. Lastly, we sketch an incentive scheme that applies vertical integration of incentives for cooperation in our research project DIANE.

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