An agent based service discovery architecture for mobile environments

The rapid expansion of networked services and wide deployment of easily accessible wireless Internet connection pave the way to access information and services using portable devices in mobile environments. However, the inherent resource shortage of mobile devices and heterogeneous environments prevent mobile users to utilize services freely and effectively. This paper presents a mobile agent based service discovery architecture CHAPLET which provides a general-purpose, integrated and efficient way to locate services in nomadic environments. The proposed architecture supports uniformed query representation, asynchronous service lookup, flexible service selection, and transparent interoperation with different heterogonous discovery protocols, while taking the constraints of wireless communication and portable devices into consideration.