Friends and foes: preventing selfishness in open mobile ad hoc networks

Technological advances are leveraging the widespread deployment of mobile ad hoc networks. An interesting characteristic of ad hoc networks is their self-organization and their dependence of the behavior of individual nodes. Until recently, most research on ad hoc networks has assumed that all nodes were cooperative. This assumption is no longer valid in spontaneous networks formed by individuals with diverse goals and interests. In such environment, the presence of selfish nodes may degrade significantly the performance of the ad hoc network. This paper proposes a novel algorithm that aims to discourage selfish behavior in mobile ad hoc networks.