NeTS-WN: A Joule for your Byte: Barter-Exchange Incentive Mechanisms for Wireless Networks

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This project will explore the role of barter-exchange incentives for cooperation in wireless networks. While cooperative wireless techniques show great promise, they also assume a degree of trust and a form of "selfless" behavior that may not be realistic. Cooperating terminals will accrue benefits, but they will also incur costs (wasted battery energy being an obvious example). Over time, benefits might logically be expected to exceed costs for most participants, but in the short term there will be winners and losers, and we cannot realistically assume that enlightened self-interest will prevail. The sizable literature on incentive mechanisms for wireless networks has emphasized abstract mechanisms in which nodes receive some form of credit for helping other nodes. These prior efforts often mimic the operation of a complex economy. In doing so, they illustrate the difficulties inherent in this approach. The efficient operation of a complex economy requires such enablers as a stable currency, a system of credit and credit-worthiness, a shared understanding of what things are worth, and a good deal of record keeping. It may be that this complexity is not warranted here, and that a simpler approach, based on the mechanisms of barter and exchange, can provide the necessary incentives for the degree of cooperation we require.In this project, we propose to explore the roles and limitations of barter-exchange incentive mechanisms for wireless networks. The specific research tasks include mechanisms for inducing cooperation between nodes by exchange of bandwidth, network connectivity, and content. The barter-exchange mechanisms proposed here provide a means to compensate terminals for temporal inequities in benefits and costs. Further, they also provide a mechanism by which cognitive radios can organize themselves into networks and/or operate efficiently in shared spectrums. The research proposed here is of great relevance to the anticipated deployment of cognitive radio networks including those planned for the wireless subnets of the GENI facility. The proposed educational supplement to the research activities here will also train graduate students in cooperative communications, an area of emerging interest in wireless data communications.