Service Handoff for Reliable and Continuous Service Access in MANET

Service unavailability frequently occurs in dynamic environments, like mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), due to service provider failure, network partitioning, or service scope outage by service provider or user mobility. Service handoff is needed to provide users with alternate matching services in case the original service becomes unavailable. However, existing service discovery solutions for MANET do not address this problem. In this paper, we propose a novel service discovery solution which employs service handoff to facilitate seamless service access for mobile users. The major concerns of service handoff are -- reducing handoff frequency, message cost, and delay as well as balancing loads on service providers. Addressing the above issues are challenging in the dynamic MANET environment. We design a reliable and seamless service discovery solution which employs two different service handoff protocols for different situations. Simulation results show that our protocols can support seamless service access for mobile users at low message cost and time delay while achieving high load balance among service providers.