Game Theoretic Modeling of Joint Topology Control and Forwarding in MANET Based on Local Information

Topology control in MANETs assigns power level to each node while preserving certain global properties such as connectivity and energy efficiency. Selfishness of nodes affects different tasks in such networks. Due to limited energy resources, nodes may reduce their power level selfishly. Also, nodes can be selfish in packet forwarding and they may avoid relay packets. Topology control and packet forwarding are dependent tasks and they need to examine as a single problem when nodes are selfish. So, induced topology will be more reliable. More ever, nodes in MANETs have limited information about network connectivity due to mobility. In this paper, we use a non-cooperative game to analyze Topology control and packet forwarding when nodes are selfish and have local knowledge about network. Our defined game uses the idea of k-hop neighborhood information and converges to a connected network. Moreover, the local game examines a tradeoff between energy efficiency and the cost of having knowledge about the network connectivity. Simulation results show that our proposed method can improve energy efficiency in high mobility MANETs.