Enforcing Cooperation in OMNs

Nodes in OMNs usually suffer from lack of end-to-end communication paths, which makes them to depend upon other intermediate nodes for forwarding their messages. Therefore, the intermediate nodes play the crucial role of cooperation in OMNs. In this chapter, we take a close look at different types of cooperation enforcement schemes proposed for OMNs. These include credit- and reputation-based mechanisms and game theoretic approaches among others. The latter portion of this chapter presents a detailed discussion on the design of a distributed scheme for promoting cooperation in OMNs. The proposed scheme, DISCUSS, is inspired by evolutionary theory. We look at different theoretical aspects as well as the feasibility of its use in real life.