Videocent, a novel incentive mechanism that could not only provide incentives for selfish nodes but also maximize the delivery quality of video, is proposed in this paper. Its effectiveness is also validated through extensive simulations based on synthetic and real-life mobility traces.
The paper presents the complete process to apply the theory of games to a communication problem. In this case, the scenario is video delivery in opportunistic networks. Nowadays, mobile apps are ready to provide new services to users, and such a proposal could be included in some of them to deliver services like video or other online, delay-restricted services.
The paper establishes the different elements of the utility function, rewarding criteria, strategies, and so on, related to the theory of games, and derives each in a causal order that helps the reader to understand the rationale of the proposal.
Simulations illustrate the results of the theoretical development. However, it could be interesting to show how it works in a real deployment. I consider it possible to deploy this strategy, but due to variable delays and the like, it could be necessary to adapt some components without compromising the basic algorithm’s operation. Additionally, it is a very interesting paper as a case study for theory of games students.