Incentive mechanisms in mobile delay tolerant network

Mobile delay tolerant network (MDTN) is a kind of no stabilized end-to-end connection network and has the characteristics of long time delay and intermittent interruption. To forward a network packet, MDTN relies on the relay nodes, using the “store - carry - forwards” routing method. However, nodes will be selfish and unwilling to forward messages for others due to the limited resources such as energy, storage space and bandwidth. Therefore, it is necessary to bring in incentive mechanism to motivate the selfish nodes to cooperatively forward messages. In this paper, we divide present incentive mechanisms into three categories: reputation-based scheme, tit-for-tat (TFT)-based incentive scheme and credit-based incentive scheme. Then we qualitatively analyze and compare typical incentive mechanisms have been proposed. Finally, we make a conclusion and point out the inadequacies in present incentive mechanisms under MDTN.