Pervasive service discovery across heterogeneous tactical networks

The Service Oriented Architecture concept is vital in order to interconnect different systems and to achieve a functional Network Centric Warfare (NCW). In order to realize an architecture based on loosely coupled services, a well-designed and efficient means of discovering the available services in the network is crucial. The service discovery mechanism used in any network must take the capabilities and limitations of the network into account. Due to the large variation in network capabilities on different operational levels, one single service discovery mechanism can not be chosen. Thus, there is a need for a toolkit consisting of different service discovery mechanisms so that each network can use the mechanism that is most suited for that particular network. In NCW, information exchange, and thus service discovery, must be available across network boundaries. This means that the different service discovery mechanisms must be able to interact with each other without the need for manual configuration. In this paper we present our novel prototype solution integrating WS-Discovery, a Web Services discovery mechanism, with Mercury, our proposed cross-layer service discovery solution tailored for use in MANETs. By using an interoperability gateway, service discovery is feasible across network boundaries, connecting mobile soldier systems and deployed tactical systems.