Address assignment in wireless sensor networks using game approach

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a game model to solve the MAC address assignment in sensor networks. Insufficiency of battery power of sensors makes the conservation of the energy be the main design issues for the sensor networks. Due to the small packet payload, the MAC header is a significant and energy-costly overhead. To remedy this, we propose a novel scheme for a MAC address assignment. The key feature which makes our approach unique is that we propose a mixed strategy game model to solve the address assignment problem. We prove that there is a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in our game model. The model takes advantage of the exploitation of spatial address ruse to save energy. Our model is easy to implement, which makes it a potential candidate for practical implementations, even for very large networks. (3 pages)