A Heterogeneous Network Modeling Method Based on Public Goods Game Theory to Explore Cooperative Behavior in VANETs

Cooperative vehicular networking has been widely studied in recent years. Existing evolution game theoretic approaches to study cooperative behavior in Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) are mainly based on the assumption that VANET is constructed as a homogeneous network. This modeling method only extracts part attributes of vehicles and does not distinguish the differences between strategy and attribute. In this paper, we focus on the heterogeneous network model based on the public goods game theory for VANET. Then we propose a Dynamic Altruism Public Goods Game (DAPGG) model consisting of rational nodes, altruistic nodes, and zealots to more realistically characterize the real VANET. Rational nodes only care about their own benefits, altruistic nodes comprehensively consider the payoffs in the neighborhood, while zealots insist on behaving cooperatively. Finally, we explore the impacts of these attributes on the evolution of cooperation under different network conditions. The simulation results show that only adding altruistic nodes can effectively improve the proportion of cooperators, but it may cause conflicts between individual benefits and neighborhood benefits. Altruistic nodes together with zealots can better improve the proportion of cooperators, even if the network conditions are not suitable for the spread of cooperative behavior.