An Efficient Protocol for Service Discovery in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Service discovery is a widely researched topic in wireless networks. Existing protocols have significant overhead for service advertisement as well as service discovery, with many messages being transmitted in the network. This high overhead is not practical in resource-constrained wireless environments. We propose a simple service discovery protocol that aims at reducing the number of messages in the network while at the same time, keeping the waiting time for services to a minimum. We evaluate the performance of the protocol for a stationary wireless sensor network. We use remote procedure calls to request a service once it is discovered, which allows for richer and parameterized interaction with the sensor.