July 13, 2017 Conference paper Open Access

Asymmetry in Energy-Harvesting Wireless Sensor Network Operation Modeled via Bayesian Games

Gindullina, Elvina; Badia, Leonardo

We consider the management of an energy harvesting wireless sensor network, inspired by game theory so as to obtain a distributed multi-agent operation. In particular, we focus on asymmetries in the nodes energetic capabilities, and how do they impact on the resulting performance. We frame the problem as a repeated Bayesian game with asymmetric players and incomplete information, where also the private information available at each node is asymmetric. We find out that instead of a proportionally fair resource utilization, such a situation ends up in an even more unbalanced situation, which leads to an inefficient management where certain nodes are utilized beyond their fair share. Future research directions are identified so as to recover information about asymmetries from the strategic gameplay of the sensors and thus enable a better management.