A social relation aware hybrid service discovery mechanism for intermittently connected wireless network

Abstract

In intermittently connected wireless network, service discovery is utilized to identify the best relay to process packets for the service registration, selection and activation. Since packets are transmitted by intermittently connected nodes, the service discovery is challenging due to the partitioned topology, long delays, and dynamic social feature. To maximize the utilization of limited network resources, in this paper, a hybrid service discovery architecture including Virtual Dictionary Node (VDN) is proposed. According to the historical data of movement, all nodes can discover their relationships with others. Subsequently, according to the node activity, VDN is chosen to facilitate the service registration procedure. Further, the service information outside of a home community can be obtained through Global Active Node (GAN) to support the service selection. To improve the utilization of network resources and provide quality services, a Service Providing Node (SPN) is determined among multiple candidates. Simulation results show that, when compared with other classical service algorithms, the proposed scheme can improve the successful service discovery ratio by 25% with reduced overheads.