Research On Game Theory- Based Flow Control Scheme In Vehicular AD-HOC Networks

Data dissemination, especially large amount of data transmission in VANETs, has become one of main tasks for the selfish vehicle nodes in vehicular ad hoc networks. Exploiting the road side units, which constructs the computing environment, provides lots of data access opportunities and stable communication time for vehicles. However, due to the high mobility of the vehicles and the frequent changes in network topology, the flow rate of the vehicles for multimedia data access may fluctuate, resulting in high transmission latency. Therefore, it is important to analyze the behaviors of the vehicle nodes and propose the related technical solutions to improve the network performance.In this paper, the resource allocation for data access is firstly investigated with a non-cooperative resource allocation game, which will eventually reach a stable Nash equilibrium (NEP). In order to solve the NEP, we propose three kinds of data transmission schemes based on Jacobi, Gauss-Seidel (G-S) and Successive Over Relaxation (SOR) iterative algorithm. Due to the low efficiency of the non-cooperative game, we propose the importance of the cooperation. Considering the malicious activities in the cooperation, a detection and punishment strategy is designed to prevent the vehicles from behavior deviation. The main contributions of this paper are listed as follows:1) We modeled the utility of the nodes by the network delay based on game theory, analyzed the non-cooperative behavior among the vehicle nodes quantitatively and qualitatively. The non-cooperative game among the vehicle nodes will eventually reach a stable Nash equilibrium point (NEP), which exists and is unique.2) In order to solve the NEP of the non-cooperative game, we proposed three kinds of data transmission schemes based on Jacobi, G-S and SOR iteration algorithm. The derivation process and the convergence of the algorithms were described in detail. The characteristics of the iteration algorithms were proved by extensive simulations.3) Due to the low efficiency of the non-cooperative game, the importance of the cooperative game was proposed. Considering the deviant behaviors that may exist in the cooperative game, we proposed a detection and punishment strategy to prevent the vehicle nodes from deviating from the cooperation and encourage the cooperation among the vehicle nodes, achieving more ideal flow control process.