A game theoretic scheme for relay service in heterogeneous content centric networks

To cope with the rapidly expanding network scale and population, the heterogeneous content centric networks (HCCNs) have emerged, where the naming content can be shared among different sub-networks by using interest packets. However, In the HCCNs, as these sub-networks are managed by different operators and some sub-network may exhibit selfish behaviors due to the limited resource, how to design a cooperative scheme for relay service to deliver naming content becomes a new challenge. Therefore, this paper proposes a bargaining game based cooperative scheme for relay service in HCCNs. Specifically, at first we present an incentive framework that each sub-network can obtain currency by providing other subnetworks with relay service. Then, by using a cooperative node as an agent, a sub-network can select an optimal adjacent subnetwork to obtain content. Next, a bargaining game is introduced to model the interaction between two sub-networks, which leads to a Subgame perfect Nash equilibrium as the agreement of two players to maximize their benefits. Finally, simulation experiments prove that the proposed scheme can outperform other conventional methods to reduce the delay and overhead.