Market models and pricing mechanisms in a multihop wireless hotspot network

Multihop wireless hotspot network [A. Balachandran et al., (2003), F. Fitzek et al., (2003), Y-D. Lin et al., (1999), K-C. Wang et al., (2003)] has been recently proposed to extend the coverage area of a base station. However, with selfish nodes in the network, multihop packet forwarding cannot take place without an incentive mechanism. In this paper, we adopt the "pay for service" incentive model, i.e., clients pay the relaying nodes for their packet forwarding service. Our focus in this paper is to determine a "fair" pricing for packet forwarding. To this end, we model the system as a market where the pricing for packet forwarding is determined by demand and supply. Depending on the network communication scenario, the market models are different. We classify the network into four different scenarios and propose different pricing mechanisms for them. Our simulation results show that the pricing mechanisms are able to guide the market into an equilibrium state quickly. We also show that maintaining communication among the relaying nodes is important for a stable market pricing.