A service discovery protocol for emergency response operations using mobile ad hoc networks

Many disaster recovery and military operations require the frequent movement of specialized personnel and equipment from one operations zone to another. Technology can play a significant role in facilitating resource organization and movements to where the need arises. In this study, we adopt the concept of service discovery in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) and adapt it to the nature of such operations. For this purpose, we introduce a novel MANET service discovery and reservation technique that is tailored to support such environments and operations. In these situations, the network is often established hastily and the communication devices are of low computational and bandwidth capabilities. The nature of service is rather unique in the sense that a service provider is required to physically move to the location of need. A service provider is often able to service only one requestor over a period of time. The proposed technique functions as a service-oriented routing protocol that locates the resource on the basis of service levels and requirements. We evaluate the technique using a simulator that we developed specifically for this purpose. The evaluation results show the high success rate of the technique in locating and reserving services with changing operational conditions such as network density and rate of requests.