An Efficient Lightweight Game Theory Based Intelligent Routing Protocol in Sparsely Connected Opportunistic Networks

Delay or disruption tolerant network (DTN) is a kind of an ad hoc networking i.e. where no infrastructure is available and no end to end connectivity is present. Nodes in DTN use Store and Forward technology (SFT) while communicating with each other and forwarding messages. There are limited resources in DTN. Sometimes a node misbehaves or act selfish by dropping the messages received by it, thus saving their resources (buffer and power). It lowers the delivery ratio and increases the overhead. To overcome this problem we used the concept of Game Theory which is a systematic and analytical study of tactical and complex interactions among entities or rational individuals having limited network resources (power/ bandwidth) present in the system in a challenged environment. Game theory helps in increasing the understanding of participants to behave rationally in the system. In this paper, the game theory is implemented in DTN environment and also focused its relationship with energy of the system and answered the question whether it makes the system energy efficient.