A large set of protocols for wireless networks require cooperation of the
nodes. However, cooperation comes with costs of the contributors without
benefit at the same time. Selfish peers may choose to avoid contributing
while still expect other peers to serve for them, i.e. choose to be
free-riders. Given that selfish behavior seriously degrades system
performance, in order to drive selfish peers to cooperate, my work focuses
at designing a set of incentive compatible protocols for wireless networks.
In this dissertation, incentive compatible protocols are designed and analyzed
for the following scenarios: (1) in mobile ad hoc networks where network
coding is applied, to drive selfish intermediate nodes to perform expensive
secure network coding and forward packets with redundancy, a social norm
based reputation system with fully distributed reputation management is
proposed and analyzed; (2) for LTE content distribution in vehicular ad hoc
networks, we propose a cluster-based scheme to save LTE bandwidth, improve
content download efficiency, and a key-management scheme to incentivize
peers to serve as cluster heads. We also investigate related issues on video congestion control, i.e. a priority based queuing scheme to maintain high video quality under congestion.