Pricing for Enabling Forwarding in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

OF THE THESIS Pricing For Enabling Forwarding in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks by Omer Ileri Thesis Director: Professor Narayan Mandayam In wireless ad hoc networks, it is often assumed that all nodes cooperate to relay packets for each other. Although spontaneous forwarding is a plausible model for military or mission based networks, it may not be realistic for commercial networks and pervasive communication and computing environments. An autonomous (selfish) node in a wireless network has two disincentives for forwarding for others: energy expenditure (real cost) and possible delays for its own data (opportunity cost). In this thesis, using a microeconomic framework based on non-cooperative game theory, we design and analyze a pricing algorithm that encourages forwarding among nodes by reimbursing forwarding nodes. We take a joint network-centric and user-centric approach where the network and the users interact in the following way. The network announces prices for channel utilization as well as reimbursements for forwarders in order to maximize its net revenue. The users in response adjust their transmit powers as well as forwarding and destination