A Generous Cooperative Routing Protocol for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Networks

In vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) networks, where selfishness degrades node activity, countermeasures for collaboration enforcement must be provided to enable application of a sage and efficient network environment. Because vehicular networks feature both high mobility and various topologies, selfish behavior judgment and establishment of a stable routing protocol become intensely challenging. In this paper, a two-phase-based generous cooperative routing protocol (called GEC) is presented for V2V networks to provide resistance to selfishness. To detect selfish behaving vehicles, a packet forwarding watchdog and an average connection rate based on the multipath weight method are used, where evidence is gathered from different watchdogs. Then, multihop relay decisions are made using a generous cooperative algorithm based on game theory. Finally, through buffering of the multiple end-to-end paths and judicious choice of optimal cooperative routes, route maintenance phase is capable of dealing with congestion and rapidly exchanging traffic. Specifically, it is proved that the GEC is theoretically subgame perfect. Simulation results show that for V2V networks with inherently selfish nodes, the proposed method isolates uncooperative vehicles and is capable of accommodating both the mobility and congestion circumstances by facilitating information dissemination and reducing end-to-end delay.