SEIR: A Stackelberg game based approach for energy-aware and incentivized routing in selfish Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic Networks (OppNets) are a sub-class of wireless Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) that can be utilized in areas of sporadic network connectivity. OppNets consist of a network of mobile devices that cooperate with each other to forward messages from the source to the destination. However, in a practical real-world setting, nodes behave selfishly and do not choose to be cooperative all throughout. This selfish behavior could be exhibited due to a variety of reasons, ranging from lower energy levels of the node to memory or buffer shortages. Thus, it is imperative to develop incentivizing mechanisms that reward nodes that are cooperative and penalize nodes that are selfish. In this paper, we present a novel routing protocol called SEIR that is able to reduce energy consumption of nodes as well as incentivize them to participate in message routing. SEIR is based on the Stackelberg game theoretic model and decides the optimal reward to give relay nodes to eliminate their selfishness and improve chances of successful message delivery. Subsequent simulations performed show that SEIR outperforms existing routing protocols in terms of energy efficiency and message delivery in an OppNet with selfish nodes.

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