Network nodes play a game – a routing alternative in multihop ad-hoc environments

A key aspect to consider in delivering data from one node to another in a communication network is finding a suitable path through the relaying nodes, i.e., routing. The standard routing solutions work well in the reliable networks, but do not achieve acceptable performance in low-power, noisy, and dynamic environments due to the high overhead associated with establishing a consistent view of the network. The paper presents a different solution to the problem of data delivery based on an evolutionary game between the network nodes. In the proposed approach, instead of forming a fixed path, the nodes take independent forwarding decisions. The set of nodes participating in the data transfer self-adjusts to the current networking conditions by playing the game, without involvement of a control plane. As a result, a low-overhead alternative to routing is obtained. The proposed solution is particularly well suited for the ad-hoc wireless networks serving time-sensitive data, e.g., it can provide an efficient communication platform for low-cost networked control systems.