Model-based service discovery for next-generation mobile systems

Abstract

The practical success of next-generation mobile systems such as 4G relics largely on its flexibility in providing adaptive and cost-effective services. Service discovery is an essential mechanism to achieve this goal. Based on the investigation of the existing service discovery protocols, this article proposes a new service discovery methodology for next-generation mobile systems: model-based service discovery or MBSD. By taking advantage of the object management group (OMG) model-driven architecture (MDA) technique, model-based service discovery (MBSD) can generate service description automatically and more precisely. Furthermore, if developed via MDA, the discovered services can be regenerated into their model format and as such facilitate the service re-engineering in a finer manner. The system architecture of MBSD and its operation are presented and implemented. The proposed methodology is validated via a mobile service scenario.