A blockchain based incentive scheme for post disaster opportunistic communication over DTN

Abstract

Delay tolerant network (DTN) is successfully proposed for setting up emergency post disaster communication networks when normal communication infrastructure is incapacitated. Performance of such networks get affected by selfish nodes that do not participate in message forwarding. Thus, nodes must receive satisfactory rewards for cooperation. The available incentive schemes either rely on central trusted authorities or do not use an explicit and secure digital currency. Blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger of immutable transactions, is an attractive approach for addressing the incentive challenges in peer-to-peer networks that lack central trusted authorities. Bitcoin, the Blockchain based cryptocurrency, make it possible to devise practical credit based incentive schemes for such networks. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain based incentive scheme for DTN based post disaster communication network that uses Bitcoin to incentivize nodes for cooperation. The scheme uses a novel reward strategy to bring rationality in the incentivizing process.