Study on Selfish Node Incentive Mechanism with a Forward Game Node in Wireless Sensor Networks

In a wireless sensor network, some nodes may act selfishly and noncooperatively, such as not forwarding packets, in response to their own limited resources. If most of the nodes in a network exhibit this selfish behavior, the entire network will be paralyzed, and it will not be able to provide normal service. This paper considers implementing the idea of evolutionary game theory into the nodes of wireless sensor networks to effectively improve the reliability and stability of the networks. We present a new model for the selfish node incentive mechanism with a forward game node for wireless sensor networks, and we discuss applications of the replicator dynamics mechanism to analyze evolutionary trends of trust relationships among nodes. We analyzed our approach theoretically and conducted simulations based on the idea of evolutionary game theory. The results of the simulation indicated that a wireless sensor network that uses the incentive mechanism can forward packets well while resisting any slight variations. Thus, the stability and reliability of wireless sensor networks are improved. We conducted numerical experiments, and the results verified our conclusions based on the theoretical analysis.