A Game Theoretical Incentive Scheme for Relay Selection Services in Mobile Social Networks

Rapid developments in mobile services and wireless technologies have prompted users to form mobile social networks (MSNs), where bundles can be delivered via opportunistic peer-to-peer links in a store-carry-forward mode. This mode needs all nodes to work in a cooperative way. However, mobile nodes may be selfish and might not be willing to forward data to others due to the limited resources (e.g., buffer and energy), resulting in degraded system performance. To tackle the aforementioned problem, this paper proposes a novel incentive scheme to stimulate selfish nodes to participate in bundle delivery in MSNs. At first, a virtual currency is introduced to pay for the relay service. Then, a bundle carrier selects a relay node from its friends or other strangers based on its status. Next, a bargain game is employed to model the transaction pricing for relay service. In addition, the simulation results show that the proposal can improve the performance of the existing schemes significantly.