Reliable Dynamic Discovery Service-Based JINI for the Next Generation Vehicle Network 2006-01-1329

Vehicles are becoming part of the Internet, either as a terminal in a mobile network, as a network node or as a moving sensor (providing environmental, car status or video information). Interest of vehicles' passengers in location-based information is steadily growing. Moreover drivers and passengers may like to receive information about traffic jams or accidents in their vicinity, or chat with other vehicle's passengers. Enabling communication among automobile nodes (cars) is not a straightforward task. Such nodes form an extremely dynamic ad hoc network, and this presents some technical challenges. One essential characteristic of such networks is that the available services are in principle unknown to a node. A Dynamic Discovery Service (DDS) protocol to discover nodes is needed. The DDS-based Jini system is the middleware for service-oriented computing in wired and wireless networks and may operate well in a static environment where all components don not change their initial locations. However, it may not always function in a dynamic networking environment, such as ad hoc networks that are formed dynamically by mobile nodes. Thus, the provision of services in the network is unreliable. In this paper, we investigate problems that can occur when mobility is considered in the current Jini-based system and propose reliable approaches to overcome these problems and enable us to use Jini in the mobile environment.