Energy-Efficient Coalition Games with Incentives in Machine-to-Machine Communications

Abstract

The need to achieve energy efficiency in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications has been a driver of the use of coalition game-based cooperative communication schemes. The proposed schemes have shown good energy-efficient performance results in the recent past. However, sustaining cooperation amongst coalition games of M2M devices from different network-operating authorities requires appropriate incentives. A review of the literature demonstrates that a limited number of contributions have considered the use of coalition games with incentives in M2M communications. In this paper, an energy-efficient coalition game with incentives in M2M communications is proposed. This work considers a Sierpinski triangle technique to partition M2M devices into multiple networks of hierarchical zones. Based on the constructed zones, a contract-modelled incentive is invoked to stimulate multihop transmissions between devices up to the BS/sink. The results obtained demonstrate that the proposed approach is on average 10% more energy efficient than the closely related existing algorithm, the coalition game theoretical clustering (CGTC).

Media Access Control in Large-Scale Internet of Things: A Review

“…The constraints on energy consumption affect how the MAC protocol logically controls the PHY layer to achieve the required scalability of the MAC protocol. For example, in [68] and [69], the authors proposed an approach based on an energy-efficient clustering for massive access in M2M networks using an incentivised cooperative approach. Such an approach will require the use of many control overheads to perform clustering and initiate incentives which will directly affect the MAC protocol.…”