A Practical Solution for Automatic Service Discovery and Usage over Resource Poor Ad-hoc Sensor Networks

Ad-hoc networks present new challenges due to its mobility, lack of infrastructure and resource limited devices. This means that service discovery (and usage) protocols targeted for traditional networks are not suitable for ad-hoc networks because they usually rely on the fixed and high availability characteristics of nodes to run important services. Ad-hoc networks need service discovery protocols compliant with its mobility and changing topology. In this paper we present a practical solution capable of provide automatic service discovery and usage over ad-hoc networks of resource poor sensor nodes. The solution was not developed from the ground-up. Instead, it was based on a (successfully) solution for traditional networks but then modified to address ad-hoc networks while keeping it original semantics.