A proxy-enabled service discovery architecture to find proximity-based services in 6LoWPAN

Recent advances in wireless communication and sensor and actuator technologies have played an essential role to realize the envisioned ubiquitous world. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged as a great catalyst for morphing personal area networks (PANs) into low power personal area networks (LoWPANs) which itself is a channel to achieve higher degrees of ubiquity and pervasiveness. These LoWPANs need to be connected with other wireless and wired networks in order to maximize the utilization of information and other resources which are mainly associated with the IP networks. Interworking of LoWPANs with IP networks brings in many challenges for service discovery and network selection. A great problem in this scenario is to find and use services in the closest proximity of the user. In this paper we propose novel service discovery architecture and algorithms that help proximity based service discovery and network selection within an IP network and LoWPAN interworked environment. The results show that our architecture helps finding and using the closest services from inside as well as outside the LoWPAN. It also reduces the traffic overhead for service discovery considerably as compared to other protocols.