Incentive driven cooperation to avoid packet loss in multihop ad hoc networks

Power management is a critical issue in ad hoc networks due to limited availability of energy resources at the nodes. Multihop routing approach can increase the connectivity and energy consumption by providing short-range and low power links. This results in additional energy consumption by the relaying nodes, whereas the energy utilization of the source node is reduced. All the nodes have limited resources, and therefore being selfish is considered as a rational behavior. The game theoretical approach is employed such that nodes agree to forward for the source despite their selfish nature by charging source for their services. In this paper, we introduce a pricing technique to optimally allocate power to single-antenna and Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output systems by developing a utility function for cooperative communication. Imposing cooperation between nodes allows relaying of data and improves network connectivity. In order to provide incentives to relaying nodes and instigate cooperation, a pricing function is introduced in the utility formulation.