In this paper, a novel self-punishment based scheduling algorithm for a cooperative real-time content download application is designed. In the proposed protocol, selfish mobile devices autonomously form cooperative groups. For each formed group, the base station transmits the content to a selected mobile device designated as seed. Then, the seed shares the content with other mobile devices called sinks over device-to-device links. After analyzing the proposed protocol using a repeated game, new self-punishment mechanisms by revocation or by decreasing the bit rate, are proposed. Such self-punishment mechanisms enable the mobile devices in each cooperative group to autonomously punish selfish seeds without requiring any help from other mobile devices outside cooperative group. Based on the proposed self-punishment mechanisms, a fair algorithm is designed to schedule the seeds in each cooperative group. Then, the designed scheduling algorithm is implemented using an Android application that is developed using Java in the Android Development Tool Bundle. The developed Android application does not depend on the operation system of mobile devices. Simulation results demonstrate that, on the average, the proposed protocol improves the energy efficiency of mobile devices to download real-time content of around 42 % compared to a traditional multicast scenario. Moreover, the proposed protocol does not let the energy efficiency of mobile devices degrade more than 11 %, on average, from the optimal solution even when all the mobile devises are selfish. The practical results show that the maximum difference in the run time of a real-time video over real-world smartphone screens is less than 500 milliseconds when the smartphones form a cooperative group using the developed Android application.
