Matchmaking algorithms to improve dynamic service matching in ubiquitous environments

Service discovery middleware allows users to find and use services through service discovery protocols without previous knowledge of the locations or characteristics of the services with minimum manual efforts in heterogeneous and ubiquitous environments. For this reason, many researchers have carried out studies related to service discovery middleware and many papers dealing with this field have been published. However, when a number of service consumers request services from middle agents (e.g. matchmaker, broker, yellow page, blackboard, etc.) within the service discovery middleware, the middle agent does not guarantee efficient and rapid matching results because they only use a simple matching algorithm. In this paper, we address the issues of existing matching algorithms, and then propose a new matchmaking algorithm based on the marriage matching algorithm of ATM networks (Gusfield and Irving, 1989) to improve middle agents´ performance, complementing shortcomings of existing matching algorithms. We also add priority based matching to the new algorithms. Through this priority, important service request messages are processed faster than request messages that have low priorities. We expect the proposed matchmaking mechanism to increase users´ satisfaction in dynamic environments.