UCLA

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.