CSR: Constrained Selfish Routing in Ad-hoc Networks

Routing protocols for ad-hoc networks assume that the nodes forming the network are either under a single authority, or else that they would be altruistically forwarding data for other nodes with no expectation of a return. These assumptions are unrealistic since in ad-hoc networks, nodes are likely to be autonomous and rational (selfish), and thus unwilling to help unless they have an incentive to do so. Providing such incentives is an important aspect that should be considered when designing ad-hoc routing protocols. In this paper, we propose a dynamic, decentralized routing protocol for ad-hoc networks that provides incentives in the form of payments to intermediate nodes used to forward data for others. In our Constrained Selfish Routing (CSR) protocol, game-theoretic approaches are used to calculate payments (incentives) that ensure both the truthfulness of participating nodes and the fairness of the CSR protocol. We show through simulations that CSR is an energy efficient protocol and that it provides lower communication overhead in the best and average cases compared to existing approaches.