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On designing incentive-compatible routing and forwarding protocols in wireless ad-hoc networks

An integrated approach using game theoretic and cryptographic techniques

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Abstract

In many applications, wireless ad-hoc networks are formed by devices belonging to independent users. Therefore, a challenging problem is how to provide incentives to stimulate cooperation. In this paper, we study ad-hoc games—the routing and packet forwarding games in wireless ad-hoc networks. Unlike previous work which focuses either on routing or on forwarding, this paper investigates both routing and forwarding. We first uncover an impossibility result—there does not exist a protocol such that following the protocol to always forward others' traffic is a dominant action. Then we define a novel solution concept called cooperation-optimal protocols. We present Corsac, a cooperation-optimal protocol which consists of a routing protocol and a forwarding protocol. The routing protocol of Corsac integrates VCG with a novel cryptographic technique to address the challenge in wireless ad-hoc networks that a link’s cost (i.e., its type) is determined by two nodes together. Corsac also applies efficient cryptographic techniques to design a forwarding protocol to enforce the routing decision, such that fulfilling the routing decision is the optimal action of each node in the sense that it brings the maximum utility to the node. We evaluate our protocols using simulations. Our evaluations demonstrate that our protocols provide incentives for nodes to forward packets. Additionally, we discuss the challenging issues in designing incentive-compatible protocols in ad hoc networks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science & Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo, Amherst, NY, 14260, USA

    Sheng Zhong

  2. Networking Research Lab, Bell Laboratories, Murray, NJ, 07974, USA

    Li Erran Li

  3. IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY, 10598, USA

    Yanbin Grace Liu

  4. Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA

    Yang Richard Yang

Authors
  1. Sheng Zhong
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  2. Li Erran Li
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  3. Yanbin Grace Liu
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  4. Yang Richard Yang
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Correspondence to Sheng Zhong.

Additional information

Part of this paper appeared in a conference version [49]. Sheng Zhong was supported in part by NSF grants ANI-0207399 and CNS-0524030. Yang Richard Yang was supported in part by NSF grants ANI-0207399, ANI-0238038, and CNS-0435201. This work was partly done while Sheng Zhong was at Yale University; Yanbin Liu was at University of Texas at Austin.

Sheng Zhong is an assistant professor in the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his PhD (2004) from Yale University and his ME (1999), BS (1996) from Nanjing University, China, all in computer science. His research interests include economic incentives and privacy protection, particularly incentive and privacy problems in mobile computing and data mining.

Li Erran Li received his B.E. in Automatic Control from Beijing Polytechnic University in 1993, his M.E. in Pattern Recognition from the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1996, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2001 where Joseph Y. Halpern was his advisor. He is presently a member of the Networking Research Center in Bell Labs. His research interests are in networking with a focus on wireless networking and mobile computing. He has served as a program committee member for several conferences including ACM MobiCom, ACM MobiHoc, IEEE INFOCOM and IEEE ICNP. He is a guest editor for JSAC special issue on Non-Cooperative Behavior in Networking. He has published over 30 papers.

Yanbin Liu received her B.E. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University (1993), Beijing, China, in 1993, and her M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin (1998), where is a Ph.D. candidate. Since 2006, he has been with IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY. Her research interests are in real-time systems, grid computing, mobile computing, and computer networks.

Yang Richard Yang received his B.E. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1993, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Since 2001, he has been with the Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, where currently he is an Associate Professor. His current research interests are in computer networks, mobile computing, and sensor networks. He leads the Laboratory of Networked Systems (LANS) at Yale University.

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Zhong, S., Li, L.E., Liu, Y.G. et al. On designing incentive-compatible routing and forwarding protocols in wireless ad-hoc networks. Wireless Netw 13, 799–816 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-006-9855-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-006-9855-1

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