An auction based AODV protocol for mobile ad hoc networks with selfish nodes

In this paper, we propose an auction mechanism for routing in mobile ad hoc networks with selfish nodes. Our approach is to promote bidding for end-to-end routes, as opposed to node-by-node bidding, to avoid wasting the source's resources (currency, time and data) by possibly losing a bid at an intermediate node. A natural extension for AODV protocols is proposed for a practical implementation of the auction mechanism. Our proposed solution combats selfishness and enforces cooperation in the network by implementing a Vickrey auction for routing with two metrics: the current energy, and the currency levels of the nodes. Our simulation results show that our proposed AODV auctioning protocol (with 100% selfish nodes in the network) performs similarly to the AODV protocol without any selfish nodes, and in most cases it outperforms the classic AODV protocol when selfish nodes are present in the network.