Non-cooperative game-based packet ferry forwarding for sparse mobile wireless networks

In sparse mobile wireless networks, normally, the mobile nodes are carried by people, and the moving activity of nodes always happens in a specific area, which corresponds to some specific community. Between the isolated communities, there is no stable communication link. Therefore, it is difficult to ensure the effective packet transmission among communities, which leads to the higher packet delivery delay and lower successful delivery ratio. Recently, an additional ferry node was introduced to forward packets between the isolated communities. However, most of the existing algorithms are working on how to control the trajectory of only one ferry work in the network. In this paper, we consider multiple ferries working in the network scenario and put our main focus on the optimal packet selection strategy, under the condition of mutual influence between the ferries and the buffer limitation. We introduce a non-cooperative Bayesian game to achieve the optimal packet selection strategy. By maximizing the individual income of a ferry, we optimize the network performance on packet delivery delay and successful delivery ratio. Simulation results show that our proposed packet selection strategy improves the network performance on packet delivery delay and successful delivery ratio.