Game theoretic energy balanced (GTEB) routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a novel game theoretic energy balanced (GTEB) geographical routing protocol to extend lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) by ensuring that forwarding nodes run out of energy approximately at the same time. In order to achieve this objective, the transmission region around a sender node is divided into a set of forwarding regions based on network density. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is used to determine the amount of traffic to be forwarded to those regions based on their available energy. Within a forwarding region, one forwarding node is selected to forward a packet using classical game theory (CGT). An exhaustive simulation study shows that the proposed protocol prolongs the network lifetime and provides a better delivery ratio as compared to similar general purpose and energy balanced routing protocols for WSNs.