Proxy-based service discovery and network selection in 6LoWPAN

Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (LoWPANs) have emerged as a catalyst technology for the realization of envisioned ubiquitous paragon. Considerable efforts are being carried on to integrate these LoWPANs with IP-based networks in order to make use of pervasive nature and existing infrastructure associated with IP-based technology. Provisioning of service discovery and network selection in such environments puts heavy communication and processing overhead. The access to closest services localizes the communication and increases the total network capacity. We introduce directory proxy agents to be deployed within LoWPANs in order to localize the service discovery communication. We also propose algorithms to make sure that service users are always connected to the closest proxy agent. The results show that our algorithms help finding the closest services and reduce the traffic overhead for service discovery considerably in LoWPANs.