Efficient Distributed D2D ProSe-Based Service Discovery and Querying in Disaster Situations

Abstract

We consider disaster situations where communication infrastructure is partially or totally destroyed. We explore alternatives for enabling fast and efficient service discovery and querying which allow rescuers get access to information produced by available various things such health sensors, wireless cameras, smartwatches and any other relevant devices or sensors helping in the rescue operation. We propose to make use of available users’ smartphones for efficiently relaying discovery/querying messages. We make use of LTE Device-to-Device Proximity Services (LTE D2D ProSe) technology to build a distributed D2D broadcast backbone which allows efficient and robust message dissemination avoiding transmission redundancy and resulting in higher energy savings while achieving high coverage. Our solution, Efficient D2D Broadcast (ED2DB) has been implemented on NS-3 by extending the LTE D2D ProSe module provided by NIST. Obtained results show that significant improvements in terms of energy consumption, end-to-end delay, and packet delivery ratio can be obtained by using ED2DB with LTE D2D ProSe over other technologies such as WiFi.