On designing incentive-compatible routing and forwarding protocols in wireless ad-hoc networks

In many applications, wireless ad-hoc networks are formed by devices belonging to independent users. Therefore, a challenging problem is how to provide incentives to stimulate cooperation. In this paper, we study ad-hoc games—the routing and packet forwarding games in wireless ad-hoc networks. Unlike previous work which focuses either on routing or on forwarding, this paper investigates both routing and forwarding. We first uncover an impossibility result—there does not exist a protocol such that following the protocol to always forward others' traffic is a dominant action. Then we define a novel solution concept called cooperation-optimal protocols. We present Corsac, a cooperation-optimal protocol which consists of a routing protocol and a forwarding protocol. The routing protocol of Corsac integrates VCG with a novel cryptographic technique to address the challenge in wireless ad-hoc networks that a link’s cost (i.e., its type) is determined by two nodes together. Corsac also applies efficient cryptographic techniques to design a forwarding protocol to enforce the routing decision, such that fulfilling the routing decision is the optimal action of each node in the sense that it brings the maximum utility to the node. We evaluate our protocols using simulations. Our evaluations demonstrate that our protocols provide incentives for nodes to forward packets. Additionally, we discuss the challenging issues in designing incentive-compatible protocols in ad hoc networks.

[1]  Mary Baker,et al.  Mitigating routing misbehavior in mobile ad hoc networks , 2000, MobiCom '00.

[2]  Marina Thottan,et al.  Market sharing games applied to content distribution in ad hoc networks , 2004, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[3]  Joan Feigenbaum,et al.  Distributed algorithmic mechanism design: recent results and future directions , 2002, DIALM '02.

[4]  Robert Morris,et al.  Link-level measurements from an 802.11b mesh network , 2004, SIGCOMM 2004.

[5]  Joan Feigenbaum,et al.  Sharing the Cost of Multicast Transmissions , 2001, J. Comput. Syst. Sci..

[6]  Markus Jakobsson,et al.  A charging and rewarding scheme for packet forwarding in multi-hop cellular networks , 2003, MobiHoc '03.

[7]  Charles E. Perkins,et al.  Ad Hoc Networking , 2001 .

[8]  Joan Feigenbaum,et al.  A BGP-based mechanism for lowest-cost routing , 2002, PODC '02.

[9]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Complex Behavior at Scale: An Experimental Study of Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks , 2002 .

[10]  Haiyun Luo,et al.  UCAN: a unified cellular and ad-hoc network architecture , 2003, MobiCom '03.

[11]  Chai-Keong Toh,et al.  Ad hoc mobile wireless networks : protocols and systems , 2002 .

[12]  Sheng Zhong,et al.  Sprite: a simple, cheat-proof, credit-based system for mobile ad-hoc networks , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).

[13]  Robert Tappan Morris,et al.  a high-throughput path metric for multi-hop wireless routing , 2003, MobiCom '03.

[14]  Sheng Zhong,et al.  On designing incentive-compatible routing and forwarding protocols in wireless ad-hoc networks: an integrated approach using game theoretical and cryptographic techniques , 2005, MobiCom '05.

[15]  Jean-Yves Le Boudec,et al.  Performance analysis of the CONFIDANT protocol , 2002, MobiHoc '02.

[16]  Ratul Mahajan,et al.  Experiences applying game theory to system design , 2004, PINS '04.

[17]  Yi-Bing Lin,et al.  Wireless and Mobile Network Architectures , 2000 .

[18]  Noam Nisan,et al.  Algorithmic Mechanism Design , 2001, Games Econ. Behav..

[19]  William Vickrey,et al.  Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders , 1961 .

[20]  David E. Culler,et al.  Taming the underlying challenges of reliable multihop routing in sensor networks , 2003, SenSys '03.

[21]  Vikram Srinivasan,et al.  Cooperation in wireless ad hoc networks , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).

[22]  Ramesh Govindan,et al.  Understanding packet delivery performance in dense wireless sensor networks , 2003, SenSys '03.

[23]  Stephan Eidenbenz,et al.  Equilibria in Topology Control Games for Ad Hoc Networks , 2003, DIALM-POMC '03.

[24]  Jon Crowcroft,et al.  Rethinking incentives for mobile ad hoc networks , 2004, PINS '04.

[25]  Sajal K. Das,et al.  ARC: an integrated admission and rate control framework for CDMA data networks based on non-cooperative games , 2003, MobiCom '03.

[26]  Subhash Suri,et al.  Vickrey prices and shortest paths: what is an edge worth? , 2001, Proceedings 2001 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing.

[27]  Anthony Ephremides,et al.  Energy-limited wireless networking with directional antennas: the case of session-based multicasting , 2002, Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies.

[28]  Jean-Yves Le Boudec,et al.  Performance analysis of the CONFIDANT protocol , 2002, MobiHoc '02.

[29]  Hari Balakrishnan,et al.  Explicit Loss Notification and Wireless Web Performance , 2006 .

[30]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Wireless communications - principles and practice , 1996 .

[31]  Markus Jakobsson,et al.  Ripping Coins For a Fair Exchange , 1995, EUROCRYPT.

[32]  Cauligi S. Raghavendra,et al.  Energy efficient communications in ad hoc networks using directional antennas , 2002, Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies.

[33]  Oded Goldreich.  Foundations of Cryptography: Index , 2001 .

[34]  Oded Goldreich,et al.  Foundations of Cryptography: Volume 1, Basic Tools , 2001 .

[35]  Refik Molva,et al.  Core: a collaborative reputation mechanism to enforce node cooperation in mobile ad hoc networks , 2002, Communications and Multimedia Security.

[36]  Levente Buttyán,et al.  Stimulating Cooperation in Self-Organizing Mobile Ad Hoc Networks , 2003, Mob. Networks Appl..

[37]  Markus Jakobsson,et al.  Stealth attacks on ad-hoc wireless networks , 2003, 2003 IEEE 58th Vehicular Technology Conference. VTC 2003-Fall (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37484).

[38]  Xiang-Yang Li,et al.  Truthful multicast routing in selfish wireless networks , 2004, MobiCom '04.

[39]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  A Course in Game Theory , 1995 .

[40]  Christos H. Papadimitriou,et al.  Algorithms, games, and the internet , 2001, STOC '01.

[41]  Levente Buttyán,et al.  Equilibrium Analysis of Packet Forwarding Strategies in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks - The Static Case , 2003, PWC.

[42]  David C. Parkes,et al.  Specification faithfulness in networks with rational nodes , 2004, PODC '04.

[43]  Oded Goldreich.  Foundations of Cryptography: Volume 1 , 2006 .

[44]  Oded Goldreich,et al.  Foundations of Cryptography: List of Figures , 2001 .

[45]  Jean-Yves Le Boudec,et al.  Nodes bearing grudges: towards routing security, fairness, and robustness in mobile ad hoc networks , 2002, Proceedings 10th Euromicro Workshop on Parallel, Distributed and Network-based Processing.

[46]  Noam Nisan,et al.  Computationally feasible VCG mechanisms , 2000, EC '00.

[47]  David C. Parkes,et al.  Using redundancy to improve robustness of distributed mechanism implementations , 2003, EC '03.

[48]  J.-P. Hubaux,et al.  Enforcing service availability in mobile ad-hoc WANs , 2000, 2000 First Annual Workshop on Mobile and Ad Hoc Networking and Computing. MobiHOC (Cat. No.00EX444).

[49]  E. H. Clarke.  Multipart pricing of public goods , 1971 .

[50]  Saurabh Ganeriwal,et al.  On selfish behavior in CSMA/CA networks , 2005, Proceedings IEEE 24th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies..

[51]  Theodore Groves,et al.  Incentives in Teams , 1973 .

[52]  Douglas R. Stinson,et al.  Cryptography: Theory and Practice , 1995 .

[53]  Stephan Eidenbenz,et al.  Ad hoc-VCG: a truthful and cost-efficient routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks with selfish agents , 2003, MobiCom '03.

[54]  Lili Qiu,et al.  Impact of Interference on Multi-Hop Wireless Network Performance , 2003, MobiCom '03.

[55]  David M. Kreps,et al.  Game Theory and Economic Modelling , 1992 .

[56]  Indrajit Ray,et al.  Fair exchange in E-commerce , 2002, SECO.