Analysis of decentralized resource and service discovery mechanisms in wireless multi-hop networks

The last few years, research in wireless multi-hop networks or ad hoc networks is mainly driven by a search for efficient routing protocols. From an application point of view, it is obvious that nodes (users) will only setup connections with a specific goal, i.e., in order to use services and resources that are available in or reachable through the ad hoc network. Consequently, resource and service discovery protocols that allow nodes to learn about the available services in the network are indispensable. In this paper, we compare the performance of two basic decentralized resource and service discovery techniques, namely proactive and reactive discovery, through simulations and theoretical analysis. Our results show that the choice between them is not straightforward. It highly depends on the network and service characteristics and on the interaction with the underlying routing protocols. Therefore, our analysis provides protocol developers with some guidelines for developing new or extending existing resource and service discovery protocols for operation in mobile ad hoc networks. In addition, concrete suggestions for developing an integrated adaptive multi-mode solution for both resource and service discovery and routing in mobile ad hoc networks are presented.