Price of ignorance in dynamic topology control

In autonomous ad hoc networks, nodes may act in their self-interest to improve their performance, perhaps at the expense of other nodes´, or even the overall network´s, performance. Besides, nodes are often mobile and must contend with limited and obsolete information about the operating state of network during their decision-making. We examine topology control of ad hoc networks and analyze the impact of mobility, selfishness, and partial information on energy efficiency and network connectivity using tools from game theory. We develop a local topology control algorithm that uses the idea of maintaining connectivity of 1-hop neighborhoods. By examining the trade-off between network performance (energy efficiency) and the cost of cooperation (by exchanging control messages) it turns out that mobility and selfishness are, in some sense, synergistic features in information-constrained networks. Such networks consume least energy when nodes are more mobile and have significantly less connectivity information.