Reliable routing in wireless sensor networks based on coalitional game theory

Abstract

Nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have the potential to be selfish without transmitting packets in routing. This study mainly focuses on the problem of reliable delivery mechanism in WSNs, and the authors' objective is to ensure stable cooperation among nodes for packets delivery and minimum routing cost at the same time. Based on the performance metrics in terms of the rate of packets forwarding, correctly reporting event, and energy remain, the authors present a coalitional game model with a characteristic function to be shared among coalition members. Then an efficient and fast convergence coalition formation algorithm is proposed to obtain the stable coalition partition in the game. Finally, on the basis of the coalitional game model, the authors design a reliable coalition formation routing (RCFR) protocol, which selects route according to the principle of lowest cost. Simulation experiments are conducted to analyse the performance of RCFR, compared with original ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing and the method proposed by Kazemeyni. The results show that RCFR effectively enhances packet delivery ratio, decreases routing establishing time, balances energy consumption, and reduces average signalling overhead.

Game theory-based Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Comparative Survey

“…All the routing protocols that will be discussed in this section are listed in this figure. RCFR [35] Assignment game approach [34] GERA [33] Energy aware trust derivation scheme [32] COMO [38] Routing framework based on energy and delay conservation [38] Intercluster routing algorithm for WSN [39] Noncooperative game Resource allocation strategy for clustering based WSN [36] EEREG [41] GBRA [43] GTEB [40] GEEC [42] ERG [45] PRGT [44] WSNs are energy constrained and they require energy-efficient routing protocols for a fading environment. Many of the state-of-the-art works utilized a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) scheme to increase energy efficiency in a fading environment.…”

“…Reliable data delivery is challenging in WSNs. The routing protocol designed in [35] focused on this problem and ensured cooperation among nodes for reliable data delivery at a minimum routing cost. First, a coalitional game model was designed with a characteristic function based on performance metrics like packet forwarding rate and remaining energy.…”

“…The authors in [35] considered the sensor nodes in WSNs as playing a coalitional game. A characteristic function was defined, along with the establishment of the pay-off allocation method among the coalition members.…”

“…Assuming that the strategy set is Γ a i = {join, not join}, it referred to the strategies that a node may or may not join a certain coalition. A coalition set in [35] was denoted by S, where S ⊆ A.…”

“…In the simulation scenario in [35], 100 packets were sent to the destination. These packets were sent taking into consideration that a certain percentage of nodes were selfish.…”