Incentive mechanism for DTN-based message delivery services

In this paper, we propose a novel incentive mechanism for message delivery services based on delay tolerant networks (DTNs). In recent years, the amount of mobile data traffic has grown rapidly due to the increase in global smartphone shipments. Some research has focused on offloading the mobile data traffic through other types of networks, such as DTNs, Wi-Fi access points, and femtocells. From the viewpoint of mobile operators, smartphone users need to be involved in order to reduce the amount of mobile data traffic via 3G/LTE networks. As a way of supporting the delivery of messages by providing surplus resources from users' smartphones DTNs look like a promising solution. However, in a DTN-based message delivery service, smartphone users who do not want to obtain the messages may also join such a store-carry-forward scheme. Therefore, it follows that smartphone users need to be motivated to transmit the messages to other users. In this paper, we propose a reward-based incentive mechanism for such a service, where the mobile operator announces a total reward to be shared among smartphone users, and smartphone users provide surplus resources for disseminating messages to other users. Consequently, we show how a win-win relationship between mobile operator and smartphone users can be created with our incentive mechanism.