Bio-inspired paradigms in network engineering games

Abstract

Network Engineering Games (NEGs) is an emerging branch of game theory developed in Electrical Engineering Departments. It concerns games that arise in all levels of telecommunication networks. There has been a growing interest among researchers in this community in bio-inspired method- ologies in recent years due to two reasons. First, many problems in networking have much in common with problems in biology. Examples are (i) propaga- tion of information in networks, that has similar dynamics as propagation of epidemics; (ii) energy management issues in wireless networks and competi- tion over resources are often similar to issues by biologists; (iii) both equilibria concepts as well as replicator dynamics that arise in evolutionary games are quite relevant to NEGs. In this paper we present an overview of applications and tools used in network engineering games, we then describe in more depth bio-inspired tools used in or relevant to network engineering. We present fi- nally an example of a stochastic epidemic game arising in wireless networks that involves competition over the relaying of information.