Guided Incentive Mechanisms for Relays to Extend the Wireless Coverage

Current capabilities of mobile handheld devices introduce them to new roles that were not possible a few years ago. We consider using personal devices as relays to increase the wireless coverage in environments with limited infrastructure. To achieve this objective, the devices in the network need to cooperate in forwarding the packets of other devices. Incentive mechanisms are normally recommended to improve this cooperation, and to encourage users to keep their devices connected and contributing part of their resources to the relay network. Based on the observation that common incentive mechanisms were mainly rewarding based on the amount of traffic relayed, we present instead a rewarding approach that reward users based on the extra coverage their devices contribute to the overall system. We discuss the rationale for this approach and the architecture of such a system. We also present a guidance mechanism that can point users towards improving the system coverage and increasing their personal rewards in return. Finally, we observe that the value of rewards is highly dependent on the specific environment and that relaying can be incorporated into other services that naturally prolong the user participation, drawing similarities from Internet peer-to-peer services.