We present a study of using game theory for protecting wireless sensor networks (WSNs) from selfish behavior or malicious nodes. Due to scalability, low complexity and disseminated nature of WSNs, malicious attacks can be modeled effectively using game theory. In this study, we survey the different game-theoretic defense strategies for WSNs. We present a taxonomy of the game theory approaches based on the nature of the attack, whether it is caused by an external attacker or it is the result of an internal node acting selfishly or maliciously. We also present a general trust model using game theory for decision making. We, finally, identify the significant role of evolutionary games for WSNs security against intelligent attacks; then, we list several prospect applications of game theory to enhance the data trustworthiness and node cooperation in different WSNs.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs)-based internet of things (IoT) are among the fast booming technologies that drastically contribute to different systems management and resilience data accessibility. Designing a robust IoT network imposes some challenges, such as data trustworthiness (DT) and power management. This paper presents a repeated game model to enhance clustered WSNs-based IoT security and DT against the selective forwarding (SF) attack. Besides, the model is capable of detecting the hardware (HW) failure of the cluster members (CMs), preserving the network stability, and conserving the power consumption due to packet retransmission. The model relies on TDMA protocol to facilitate the detection process and to avoid collision between the delivered packets at the cluster head (CH). The proposed model aims to keep packets transmitting, isotropic or non-isotropic transmission, from the CMs to the CH for maximizing the DT and aims to distinguish between the malicious CM and the one suffering from HW failure. Accordingly, it can manage the consequently lost power due to the malicious attack effect or HW malfunction. Simulation results indicate the proposed mechanism improved performance with TDMA over six different environments against the SF attack that achieves the Pareto optimal DT as compared to a non-cooperative defense mechanism.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided terahertz (THz) communications have been regarded as a promising candidate for future 6G networks because of its ultra-wide bandwidth and ultra-low power consumption. However, there exists the beam split problem, especially when the base station (BS) or RIS owns the large-scale antennas, which may lead to serious array gain loss. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the beam split and beamforming design problems in the THz RIS communications. Specifically, we first analyze the beam split effect caused by different RIS sizes, shapes and deployments. On this basis, we apply the fully connected time delayer phase shifter hybrid beamforming (FC-TD-PS-HB) architecture at the BS and deploy distributed RISs to cooperatively mitigate the beam split effect. We aim to maximize the achievable sum rate by jointly optimizing the hybrid analog/digital beamforming, time delays at the BS and reflection coefficients at the RISs. To solve the formulated problem, we first design the analog beamforming and time delays based on different RISs’ physical directions, and then it is transformed into an optimization problem by jointly optimizing the digital beamforming and reflection coefficients. Next, we propose an alternatively iterative optimization algorithm to deal with it. Specifically, for given the reflection coefficients, we propose an iterative algorithm based on the minimum mean square error technique to obtain the digital beamforming. After, we apply Lagrangian dual reformulation (LDR) and multidimensional complex quadratic transform (MCQT) methods to transform the original problem to a quadratically constrained quadratic program, which can be solved by alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) technique to obtain the reflection coefficients. Finally, the digital beamforming and reflection coefficients are obtained via repeating the above processes until convergence. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme can effectively alleviate the beam split effect and improve the system capacity.

In this paper, a novel interference mitigation and power allocation (PA) scheme is investigated for downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). The proposed scheme, named power allocation based interference alignment and coordinated beamforming (PA-IA-CB), consists of two stages. The first stage applies two steps of IA-CB; one step for canceling the inter-cluster and the co-tier interference among small cells (SCs), while the other step deals with the inter-cluster interference within the macro cell (MC). In the second stage, the cross-tier interference is proposed to be managed by properly handling the allocated power to the macro base station (MBS) and the small base stations (SBSs). The PA problem is modeled as a non-cooperative game between the MBS and the SBS with the aim of increasing the system sum rate. Simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed technique in terms of total system sum rate and outage probability compared to the conventional schemes.

The rapid development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a significant incentive to contribute to vulnerable applications such as cognitive radio (CR). This paper proposes a Stackelberg game approach to enhance the WSN-based CR security against the spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack and conserve the consequently lost power consumption. The attack aims to corrupt the spectrum decision by imposing interference power to the delivered reports from the sensor nodes (SNs) to the fusion center (FC) to make a protection level below a specific threshold. The proposed model utilizes the intelligent Stackelberg game features along with the matched filter (MF) to maximize the number of protected reports sent by the SNs to the FC leading to an accurate decision of the spectrum status. Furthermore, the TDMA protocol is utilized to resolve the complexity of employing MF for the spectrum detection to avoid the collision between the delivered reports. The proposed model aims to enhance the number of correctly received reports at the FC, and hence manage the lost energy of reports retransmission due to the malicious attack effect. Moreover, the model can conserve the lost power of the failed communication attempts due to the SSDF attack impact. Simulation results indicate the improved performance of the proposed protection model along with the MF over six different environments against the SSDF attack as compared to two defense schemes, namely, random and equal weight defense strategies.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is expected to provide low-latency computation service for wireless devices (WDs). However, when WDs are located at cell edge or communication links between base stations (BSs) and WDs are blocked, the offloading latency will be large. To address this issue, we propose an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted cell-free MEC system consisting of multiple BSs and IRSs for improving the transmission environment. Consequently, we formulate a min–max latency optimization problem by jointly designing multiuser detection (MUD) matrices, IRSs’ reflecting beamforming vectors, WDs’ offloading data size and edge computing resource, subject to constraints on edge computing capability and IRSs phase shifts. To solve it, an alternating optimization algorithm based on the block coordinate descent (BCD) technique is proposed, in which the original nonconvex problem is decoupled into two subproblems for alternately optimizing computing and communication parameters. In particular, we optimize the MUD matrix based on the second-order cone programming (SOCP) technique, and then develop two efficient algorithms to optimize IRSs’ reflecting vectors based on the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques, respectively. Numerical results show that employing IRSs in cell-free MEC systems outperforms conventional MEC systems, resulting in up to about 60% latency reduction can be attained. Moreover, numerical results confirm that our proposed algorithms enjoy a fast convergence, which is beneficial for practical implementation.