Service description for pervasive service discovery

Service discovery in pervasive computing environments is different from traditional computing environments. Pervasive services are more diverse than traditional services, ranging from environmental controls to computation resources. Pervasive computing encompasses a wide range of devices, from small, resource-poor devices, such as an LCD projector, to powerful desktop and server systems. The change in application space from the virtual environment to a pervasive, physical world means that service discovery methods must accommodate the additional dimensions including location and time. Current service discovery mechanisms cannot account for this information and, therefore, do not provide optimal service discovery. In this paper, we examine the requirements of description of services and the mechanisms that process the descriptions in pervasive computing service discovery. Our concerns are the accuracy of location and conservation of resources.