Chapter 4 Using Game Theory to Motivate Trust in Ad Hoc Vehicular Networks

This chapter considers the cooperation between vehicular nodes in an ad hoc network as a decision resulting from the potential interaction between any two such nodes. We consider the potential for continuous communication between these nodes, under the condition they keep sharing mutually beneficial information. Describing and analysing entity interactions is a situation that makes a good candidate to be modelled using the theoretical framework of game theory. The fact that this new and interesting mode of human interaction between vehicles does not need to be a human-initiated process, but a process that can be initiated by an object-to-object communication, because of IoT, brings up the issue of establishing a trusted communication between the interacting parties. However, establishing such trusted, cooperative behaviour in vehicular networks is not an easy task, even if vehicular networks are considered to be user-centric networks. Game theory provides appropriate models and tools to handle multiple, interacting entities attempting to make decisions and seeking a strategic solution state that maximizes each entity’s utility, incorporating a consideration of trust within that utility. Game theory has been extensively used in networking research as a theoretical decision-making framework, and this chapter makes use of this know-how. © 2020, Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH. All rights reserved.