Resource Allocation for Wireless Body Area Networks in Presence of Selfish Agents

In medical emergency situations, fair distribution of resources in a multi-tenant scenario is crucial. In such resource-constrained situations, these organizations may behave in a non-cooperative and selfish manner to maximize their individual incentives at the cost of the overall system welfare. Existing research works on dynamic resource allocation, have mostly assumed that the participating agents always behave truthfully, and place bids in accordance with their actual requirements. In practice, this assumption may not always hold true, as organizations have positive incentives for overstating. We design an algorithm, grounded in the theory of distributed mechanism design, to effectively alleviate untruthful demeanor of the organizations. The proposed resource allocation algorithm allows such organizations to maximize their individual incentives only by acting truthfully, whilst the overall system welfare is also maximized. The mechanism designed is resilient to selfish behavior of the organizations, and ensures voluntary participation of the organizations in the auction. It is also incentive compatible in nature, and dictates a truthful incentive-payment scheme.