CAREER: Enforceable Economic Mechanisms for Cooperation in Wireless Networks

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Recent advances in computing hardware and wireless technology have resulted in widespread popularity of applications and systems involving highly distributed wireless networks. In such a network, each node may belong to an independent organization or individual that has its own interests, and so may not always want to behave cooperatively. However, if these nodes do not cooperate, the performance of the network may degrade, or the entire network may become dysfunctional. Consequently, we need to design economic mechanisms to stimulate these nodes to cooperate. In this project, we study the design of enforceable economic mechanisms. We say an economic mechanism is enforceable if it provides sufficiently strong incentivesfor cooperative behavior and security protection against cheating and has been systematically evaluated in experiments. We emphasize the great importance to make economic mechanisms enforceable because if an economic mechanism is not enforceable, it cannot be effectively used in practice to simulate cooperation. Our research plan is to focus on two specific problems, namely the Routing and Packet Forwarding Problem and the FDMA Channel Assignment Problem, because they are simple but fundamental. Besides these two problems, it is also planned to study experimental methods for systematically evaluating the incentive compatibility and computation and communication efficiency of economic mechanisms in wireless networks, as well as a few other selected problems of non-cooperation in wireless networks. In addition, the plan includes education activities to disseminate cutting-edge knowledge on cooperation in wireless networks to undergraduate and graduate students.