N000140210554.

Abstract The proper functioning of mobile ad hoc net-works depends on the hypothesis that each individual node is ready to forward packets for others. This common assump-tion, however, might be undermined by the existence of self-ish users who are reluctant to act as packet relays in order to save their own resources. Such non-cooperative behav-ior would cause the sharp degradation of network through-put. To address this problem, we propose a credit-based Secure Incentive Protocol (SIP) to stimulate cooperation among mobile nodes with individual interests. SIP can be implemented in a fully distributed way and does not re-quire any pre-deployed infrastructure. In addition, SIP is immune to a wide range of attacks and is of low commu-nication overhead by using a Bloom filter. Detailed simu-lation studies have confirmed the efficacy and efficiency of SIP