III, “Energy efficient relaying games in cooperative wireless transmission systems

Abstract—In wireless networks, intermediate nodes are often used as relays to reduce the transmission energy required to deliver a message to an intended destination. The selfishness of autonomous nodes, however, raises con-cerns about their willingness to expend energy to relay information for others. This paper considers the effect of selfishness on energy efficiency using a non-cooperative game theoretic approach. A two-source relaying game is formulated for both non-fading and fading scenarios. We show that cooperative transmission with optimum energy allocation is a Nash Equilibrium in non-fading channels when the sources are sufficiently patient. In fading channels, cooperative transmission with optimum energy allocation is also a Nash Equilibrium when a ceiling is applied to the relay energy of each source. Simulation results show that sources acting in their own self-interest can achieve an energy efficiency close to that of centrally optimized energy allocation in many cases. I