Cooperation Stimulation in Cooperative Communications: An Indirect Reciprocity Game

The viability of cooperative communications largely depends on the willingness of users to help. However, in future wireless networks where users are rational and pursue different objectives, they will not help relay information for others unless this can improve their own utilities. Therefore, it is very important to study the incentive issues when designing cooperative communication systems. In this paper, the authors propose a cooperation stimulation scheme for multiuser cooperative communications using indirect reciprocity game.