Trade: Cooperation without Trust in 802.11 Networks

Blasting garbage packets in a wireless network is an anti-social and undesirable behaviour. Nevertheless, we propose a cooperation scheme called Trade in which wireless devices use the threat of blasting to force other nodes to fairly share network airspace. We have used game theory to prove that trade is a Nash-equilibrium strategy that guarantees participating nodes negotiate faithfully. This paper describes the Trade framework, its benefits and its implementation challenges.