A Relaying Incentive Scheme for Multihop Cellular Networks Based on Coalition Game with Externalities

Abstract

Cooperative multihop communication can greatly increase network throughput, yet packet forwarding may involve opportunity and energy cost for relays. Thus one of the primary problems in the implementation of multihop transmission is how to foster cooperation among selfish nodes. Existing researches mainly adopt price and monetary stimulating. We propose instead a self-enforcing incentive scheme free of monetary remunerating for asymmetric cellar network. The incentive comprises double compensation, namely, global stimulating policy among coalitions (Inter-BEA) and local allocating rule within each coalition (Intra-BEA). We validate effectiveness of the proposed BEA scheme based on coalition game theory. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation show that our techniques can provide enough motivation for nodes to relay for own profits, and thus enlarge system coverage.