Towards A Game Theoretic Understanding of Ad-Hoc Routing

In this paper we present a new application of game theory, in which game theoretic techniques are used to provide a rigorous underpinning to the analysis of ad-hoc routing protocols. The explosion of interest in ad-hoc networks over the last few years has resulted in a very large number of routing protocols being proposed. Despite this, the science of analysing routing protocols is still relatively immature, and the question that remains is how to decide “how good” a given protocol is. We propose a game theoretic approach as a potentially effective means of answering this question. The conceptual mapping of routing into a game is, we believe, natural and simple. Furthermore, game theory provides an extensive repertoire of tools to analyse key properties. The paper describes how routing techniques can be modelled as games and presents some analytical results.