Detection of Selfish Nodes in Networks Using CoopMAC Protocol with ARQ

CoopMAC has been recently proposed as a possible implementation of cooperation protocols in the medium access control (MAC) layer of a wireless network. However, some nodes may refrain from cooperation for selfish purposes, e.g. in order to save energy, in what is called selfish behavior or misbehavior. This protocol violation worsens other nodes´ performance and can be avoided if other nodes detect and punish (e.g. banning from the network) misbehaving nodes. However, fading and interference may prevent nodes from cooperating even if they are willing, therefore it is not trivial to identify misbehaving nodes. In a fading scenario where an automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol is used, we propose a mechanism that allows to detect misbehaving nodes. Two approaches, either based on the uniformly most powerful (UMP) test or on the sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) are considered. The two techniques are characterized and compared in terms of their average detection delay and resulting network performance.