OMH - Suppressing Selfish Behavior in Ad hoc Networks with One More Hop

In ad hoc networks, wireless nodes rely on each other to transmit data over multi-hops by forwarding packets. A selfish node may decide not to forward packets for other nodes to save its own resource but still use the network to send and receive data. Such a selfish behavior can degrade network performance significantly. Most existing work took observation, reputation and token based mechanisms. However observation based mechanism suffers from mobility and collusion; reputation and token based mechanisms suffer from system complexity and efficiency. In this paper, we propose One More Hop (OMH) protocol which suppresses selfish behavior from a totally new angle. Basing on the fact that the selfish but rational nodes still want to receive and send packets, if a node can not determine whether a packet is destined for it or not, it can not drop the packet. With modified routing protocol and cryptographic techniques, OMH achieves this design target. It is robust and efficient. The simulation shows that OMH works well under different network situations.