Middleware support for delay-tolerant service provision in disconnected mobile ad hoc networks

The service-oriented approach is known to be adequate for building distributed applications for mobile ad hoc networks, and a number of successful research works using this approach in routed MANETs have already been conducted. Yet, providing support for service-oriented applications poses specific problems in disconnected MANETs where end-to-end connectivity is not guaranteed. This paper presents a prototype Java middleware support for delay-tolerant service provision in disconnected MANETs. It first describes the lower layer of this middleware, which implements a protocol for document dissemination that leverages on delay-tolerant, opportunistic and content-based communication. It then explains how service discovery and service invocation mechanisms can be implemented on top of this protocol. Finally, simulation results are presented, which show that this approach gives good results compared with an alternative approach that consists in exploiting single-hop interactions between service providers and service clients.