A Truthful and Efficient Auction Mechanism for Data Preservation in Base Station-Less Sensor Networks

We design a truthful and efficient auction mechanism for data preservation in the base station-less sensor networks (BSNs). BSNs refer to many emerging sensing applications that are deployed in challenging environments such as underwater or remote areas. In these environments, as installing a high-power base station near the sensing field is not feasible, sensory data must be preserved inside the network before uploading opportunities arise. We consider that all the sensor nodes are intelligent and selfish and propose an efficient auction mechanism to motivate the sensor nodes to achieve energy-efficient data preservation in the BSN. We investigate the rationality, truthfulness, and energy efficiency of the auction mechanism. Via theoretical and simulation results, we show that our auction mechanism is not only time- and energy-efficient but also guarantees the truthfulness for the selfish sensor nodes.