Pricing to stimulate node cooperation in wireless Ad Hoc networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, network services are provided through the cooperation of all nodes. Albeit that good teamwork could smoothly run a mobile network, selfish node behaviors would probably cause it to break down. Some examples of these selfish node behaviors would include, "listening only" for saving energy or "receiving the valuable" without forwarding the packets to others. To cope with this problem, we propose PDM, a price-demand function based pricing model, to restrains the selfish behaviors of mobile nodes. PDM is based on the packet sending requirements of the source nodes and the forwarding cost of relay nods. Using this pricing methodology, the packet forwarding activities will be profitable for the relay node and further stimulate cooperation in the network. In particular, the new model enjoys the merit of giving relay nodes no reason to dishonestly report their forwarding costs, because an honest cost claim has proven to be an optimal strategy for relay nodes. Furthermore, our new model uses a price-demand function to reflect the relationship between the service demand of the source nodes and the service supply of the relay nodes. As a consequence, our approach reduces the source nodes' payments to send packets, and at the same time guarantees that the packets sent by the source nodes are delivered to the destination.