A Light-Weight Service Discovery Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks
Mallah · Journal of Computer Science · 2009
Problem statement: In mobile ad hoc networks devices do not rely on a fixed infrastructure and thus have to be self-organizing.This gives rise to various challenges to network applications.Existing service discovery protocols fall short of accommodating the complexities of the ad-hoc environment.However, the performance of distributed service discovery architectures that rely on a virtual backbone for locating and registering available services appeared very promising in terms of average delay but in terms of message overhead, are the most heavy-weight.In this research we propose a very light-weight, robust and reliable model for service discovery in wireless and mobile networks by taking into account the limited resources to which are subjected the mobile units.Approach: Three processes are involved in service discovery protocols using virtual dynamic backbone for mobile ad hoc networks: registration, discovery and consistency maintenance.More specifically, the model analytically and realistically differentiates stable from unstable nodes in the network in order to form a subset of nodes constituting a relatively stable virtual Backbone (BB).Results: Overall, results acquired were very satisfactory and meet the performance objectives of effectiveness especially in terms of network load.A notable reduction of almost 80% of message signaling was observed in the network.This criterion distinguishes our proposal and corroborate to its light-weight characteristic.On the other hand, results showed reasonable mean time delay to the requests initiated by the clients.Conclusion: Extensive simulation results obtained confirm the efficiency and the light-weight characteristic of our approach in significantly reducing the cost of message overhead in addition to having the best delay values when compared with strategies well-known in the literature.