Topological importance as an incentive to cooperate in mobile ad hoc networks: A game theoretic analysis

Packet forwarding in a multihop wireless network is always prone to jeopardy by the selfish behavior of participating nodes striving to save scarce energy resources. There are many mechanisms which offer appealing incentives to a node in order to instigate cooperation. These incentives are rather unnatural or in some cases the nodes are allured to adapt a tempered proof policy. In this paper, a natural incentive is explored which is applicable to a much general class of networks rather than arrangements that exhibit specific topology configurations. The proposed incentive is associated with the topological strategic position of the source and relay nodes located in the network. It is further argued that an appropriate strength of penalty of betraying can substantially improve the effectiveness of the proposed incentive, even at very low levels of strategic importance.