Self-organization of nodes in mobile ad hoc networks using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms

In this paper, we present a distributed and scalable evolutionary game played by autonomous mobile ad hoc network (MANET) nodes to place themselves uniformly over a dynamically changing environment without a centralized controller. A node spreading evolutionary game, called NSEG, runs at each mobile node, autonomously makes movement decisions based on localized data while the movement probabilities of possible next locations are assigned by a forced-based genetic algorithm (FGA). Because FGA takes only into account the current position of the neighboring nodes, our NSEG, combining FGA with game theory, can find better locations. In NSEG, autonomous node movement decisions are based on the outcome of the locally run FGA and the spatial game set up among it and the nodes in its neighborhood. NSEG is a good candidate for the node spreading class of applications used in both military tasks and commercial applications. We present a formal analysis of our NSEG to prove that an evolutionary stable state is its convergence point. Simulation experiments demonstrate that NSEG performs well with respect to network area coverage, uniform distribution of mobile nodes, and convergence speed.