A Game Theoretical Approach to Design

Abstract

Game Theory provides a mathematical tool for the analysis of interactions between the agents with conflicting interests, hence it is a suitable tool to model some problems in communication systems, especially, to wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where the prime goal is to minimize energy consumption than high throughput and low delay. Another important aspect of WSNs are their ad-hoc topology. In such ad-hoc and distributed environment, selfish nodes can easily obtain the unfair share of the bandwidth by not following the medium access control (MAC) protocol. This selfish behavior, at the expense of well behaved nodes, can degrade the performance of overall network. In this chapter, the authors use the concepts of game theory to design an energy efficient MAC protocol for WSNs. This allows them to introduce persistent/non-persistent sift protocol for energy efficient MAC protocol and to counteract the selfish behavior of nodes in WSNs. Finally, the research results show that game theoretical approach with the persistent/non-persistent sift algorithm can improve the overall performance as well as achieve all the goals simultaneously for MAC protocol in WSNs.