An Incentive-Cooperative Forwarding Model Based on Punishment Mechanism in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Due to the limited processing ability, storage and energy of mobile nodes in wireless Ad hoc networks, nodes always conserve their scare resources to show the selfish behavior. So stimulating the cooperation behaviors among nodes to actively forward packets is becoming an important research topic. According to the idea of classic game theory, this paper firstly proposes a one-step game model to analyze the payoff matrix between neighbor nodes, and extends the model to an infinite-repeated game on cooperated forwarding packets to enhance the collaboration behavior, and illustrates three punishment strategies towards behaviors of selfish nodes (one-step punishment strategy, severe punishment strategy and a general punishment strategy), and then derives the corresponding incentive cooperation forwarding conditions. Nevertheless, in this paper, we focus on the general punishment mechanism for consideration. Finally, to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the scheme and mechanism mentioned above, this paper implements this scheme and compares its performance with classic AODV protocol by using NS2, Moreover, displays the incentive-cooperative executing process of different utilities of selfish nodes during the simulation time. Simulation results show that this scheme can enhance cooperation effectively, improve throughput among the nodes, prolong the lifetime of the network and increase the expected total payoff of all nodes.