A Low Overhead Truthful Energy-Efficient Routing Protocol in Wireless Mobile Ad hoc Networks with Selfish Nodes

When nodes in a wireless mobile ad hoc network belong to different users, they may act selfishly. A feasible way to stimulate cooperation among selfish nodes is to reimburse the forwarding service providers for their costs. We propose a low overhead truthful energy-efficient routing protocol called LOTER, which introduces the VCG mechanism into such a network that consists of selfish nodes. In LOTER, nodes collect their neighbors´ information. The destination selects several RREP paths. If it is on the RREP path, the node sends its collected information to the source. Based on such information, the source constructs a subgraph, finds the least cost path to the destination and calculates the VCG payments to the nodes on the chosen least cost path. LOTER can provide truthful and energy-efficient routing. Furthermore, it collects the topologic information with low overhead. Simulation results show that LOTER provides better performance than other existing protocols.