Timed bargaining-based opportunistic routing model for dynamic vehicular ad hoc network
Kim EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
Timed bargaining-based opportunistic routing model for dynamic vehicular ad hoc network
Sungwook Kim 0
0 Department of Computer Science, Sogang University , 35 Baekbeom-ro (Sinsu-dong), Mapo-gu, Seoul 121-742 , South Korea
Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a mobile ad hoc network with a dynamic property; the vehicles possess high mobility and undergo fast topology changes. This special type of mobile ad hoc network is a popular topic of research. Owing to the specific features of VANETs, unique routing protocols are required for short-range, high-speed communication among nearby vehicles. In this study, we propose a new opportunistic routing scheme based on the timed bargaining game. In order to dynamically adapt to the current VANET situation, the proposed scheme effectively formulates the opportunistic routing mechanism as an iterative bargaining model with a timed learning approach. Based on a simulation study, it is confirmed that the proposed scheme can achieve better performance than other existing schemes in diverse VANET environments.
Vehicular ad hoc network; Timed game; Opportunistic routing; Nash bargaining model; Sequential bargaining approach
1 Introduction
In recent years, the explosive growth of traffic and
ubiquitous information service have enabled close
integration of communication networks with vehicular
networks; thus the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET)
emerged and became a popular area of research. In
particular, VANET is a self-organized and
openstructured inter-vehicular communication network that
has dynamic, distributed, and multi-hop characteristics;
further, it also possesses unique attributes such as the
high speed of vehicles, frequent topology changes,
predictable trajectory, and the absence of hardware
constraints. These attributes directly affect the
transmission performance in VANETs [
1–3
].
For efficient VANET operations, routing is
extremely important; the network performance is
strongly related to the routing algorithms. In the last
few decades, significant research effort has been
devoted to VANETs and many new and tailored routing
protocols have been proposed. In order to maximize
the network performance, most efforts have focused on
determining a method that will reliably transfer
messages to vehicles within communication range and in
the complete network to avoid congestion, collision,
and traffic management. However, owing to the
dynamic nature and explicit requirements of VANETs, the
adaptation and standardization of such routing
protocols is extremely difficult [
1, 2
].
Nowadays, the game theoretic approach is widely
recognized as a practical perspective for the
implementation of real-world network operations. Game
theory is a field of applied mathematics that provides
an effective tool to model the interactions among
independent decision makers. It can describe the
possibility of reacting to the actions of the other
decision makers and analyze the situations of
conflict and cooperation. In recent times, game theory
has emerged as an effective method for designing
routing algorithms and has introduced well-fitted
models to describe the interaction among network
vehicles [
4, 5
].
In 1950, John Nash introduced the fundamental notion
of the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) to allocate a
resource fairly and optimally [
4
]. The NBS is a field
of cooperative game theory and an effective tool to
achieve a mutually desirable solution with a good
balance between efficiency and fairness [
4
]. Owing to
its numerous desirable properties, the basic concept
of NBS has become an interesting research topic in
a wider range of real-life situations, such as
economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and
biology. In recent times, telecommunications and
VANET operations have been added to this list.
However, traditional NBS models assume that all the
information needed by any game player is known
completely. In a real-world VANET situation,
information about the actions of other vehicles may be
uncertain or unknown. Hence, the traditional NBS
model cannot be directly applied to real-world
VANET routing operations.
Motivated by the facts presented in the above
discussion, we design a new routing scheme for
VANETs. In order to adapt to the dynamic VANET
situations, the classical NBS model is modified based
on the sequential bargaining approach. By taking
into account the timed game model, the proposed
scheme is designed as an iterative routing process in
which each iteration involves three key steps: (i)
observing the current network environment, (ii)
estimating the prospective payoff to select the most
adaptable strategy, and (iii) updating the information
to adapt to the network dynamics. In the case of
incomplete information, our timed game approach can
relax the traditional NBS assumption that all
information is completely known; this is the main
advantage of our proposed scheme. The im (...truncated)