Energy Efficiency of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks with Selfish Users

We deal with energy efficiency and quality of service provisioning in multihop ad hoc wireless networks. We assume that each node generates traffic for some other node in the network and that the available routes between each source-destination pair are known. Each source randomly selects one of the possible routes and asks the intermediate nodes on the route to relay traffic. Since energy is a valuable resource, intermediate nodes may not wish to consume their energy to carry the source’s traffic. However, if every node behaves ‘selfishly’ and refuses to cooperate, network throughput may be drastically reduced. In this paper, we investigate the tradeoff that exists between energy consumption and blocking probability of a session, and study the ability of the network at guaranteeing a low energy consumption to users that want or need to be selfish. We define a parameter, called sympathy, which reflects the level of selfishness/altruism of the nodes. We propose two different strategies, which govern the node behavior, and compare their performance as sympathy is varied.