ADHT: Agent-based DHT architecture for constrained devices

In this paper, we propose a novel architecture, called ADHT, that allows the participation of wireless and constrained-capacity M2M devices in a P2P overlay without compromising their battery life. The approach makes P2P-based networking feasible in scenarios where dedicated super-peer nodes are not available or not feasible to use, e.g. when all the participating nodes in a subnet are constrained devices. The concept is based on sharing the peer responsibilities among the nodes within the same subnet using mobile agent-based virtual peers. The mobile agent-based approach enables on-the-fly configurations to further reduce energy consumption in the subnet nodes during runtime. The presented mobile agent composition is both programming language- and platform-independent. Therefore it inherently enables heterogeneous platforms, from the low-power resource-constrained embedded networked devices to the cloud platforms, to operate as the P2P peer. We analyze the power consumption characteristics of the mobile agent-based approach by comparing it with alternative architectures with a numerical analysis.