Incentivizing cooperation in sensor and control networks

In this paper, we use game theory to model a general participation game for a distributed and dynamic network. Such networks may include sensing and control agents. The main problem we are interested in is how to achieve broad participation while aligning the incentives of all the participating agents. A consumer node is willing to invest an amount of rewards to get a set of networked sensor nodes, alternatively agents, to participate in some desirable activity; for example rewarding nodes by allocating more bandwidth to them. For the scope of this paper, the agents are heterogeneous sensors, and the consumer is a supervising sensor whether that be a human or a super-node. The consumer desires an accurate reading of a signal of interest; however, it may only communicate with its direct neighbors, or the sensors closest to it. Therefore, it must incentivize its neighbors to participate in further advertising and participating in the (sensing) activity. The neighbors then incentivize their neighbors to participate, and so on. We assume the commodity being traded to be the agent´s participation in the activity; sensing a signal, and forwarding a query are some examples of participation. In the resulting game, agents choose their offers strategically. We prove the existence of equilibria for specific utility functions and simple network structures.