MobiGame: A user-centric reputation based incentive protocol for delay/disruption tolerant networks

Delay/Disruption tolerant networks (DTNs) are self-organized wireless networks, where end-to-end network connectivity is not available and the data forwarding relies on the assumption that the intermediate nodes are ready to ''store, carry and forward'' messages in an opportunistic way. This assumption can be easily violated by the selfish nodes which may be unwilling to use their precious resources by serving as relays. Due to the unique network characteristics, incentive issue is extraordinarily challenging in DTNs. To tackle this issue, in this paper, we propose MobiGame, a user-centric reputation based incentive protocol for DTNs, which allows a node to manage its reputation evidence. For the fairness requirement, we define a game-theoretic framework to design reasonable costs and reward parameters in the MobiGame's bundle forwarding, which leads to a Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium. Performance simulations are given to demonstrate the security, effectiveness and efficiency.