Network Layer Support for Service Discovery in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

— Service discovery is an integral part of the ad hoc networking to achieve stand-alone and self-configurable communication networks. In this paper, we discuss possible service discovery architectures along with the required network support for their implementation, and we propose a distributed service discovery architecture which relies on a virtual backbone for locating and registering available services within a dynamic network topology. Our proposal consists of two independent components: (i) formation of a virtual backbone and (ii) distribution of service registrations, requests, and replies. The first component creates a mesh structure from a subset of a given network graph that includes the nodes acting as service brokers and a subset of paths (which we refer as virtual links) connecting them. Service broker nodes (SBNs) constitute a dominating set, i.e. all the nodes in the network are either in this set or only one-hop away from at least one member of the set. The second c...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Ulas C. Kozat, Leandros Tassiulas
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2003, Service Discovery, Service Discovery Architecture, Virtual Backbone