MDR: A P2P-based market-guided distributed routing mechanism for high-throughput hybrid wireless networks

A hybrid wireless network combines a mobile ad-hoc network and an infrastructure network. Efficient and reliable data routing is important for high throughput in such networks. Existing routing schemes that simply combine ad-hoc and infrastructure routings inherit the drawbacks of ad-hoc routing and fail to take advantage of the infrastructure for high efficiency. Current reputation systems relying on local information exchange are not sufficiently effective and efficient in guiding reliable routing. This paper presents a peer-to-peer (P2P)-based Market-guided Distributed Routing mechanism (MDR) to increase the throughput of hybrid networks by achieving a high efficiency and reliability. Taking advantage of the high density of base stations, the packets from a source node are distributively transmitted to base stations directly or indirectly. The packet transmission in MDR is modeled as a market trading behaviors, in which source nodes pay credits to relay nodes. The service price is determined by the supply and demand equilibrium of the nodes in the system. MDR organizes base stations into a P2P structure to facilitate high efficient data operation for service price determination. An erasure coding-based distributed routing algorithm is also proposed to facilitate an efficient and reliable market trading. Theoretical analysis demonstrates the distinguishing features of MDR and simulation results show that MDR outperforms the traditional hybrid routing schemes and reputation systems.