Searching Strategies for Target Discovery in Wireless Networks

Information dissemination and information retrieval are the ultimate goals of wireless networks. Before information propagates within the network, the target peers, from which information is retrieved or to which information is disseminated, first need to be discovered. This target discovery problem has extensive applications in wireless ad hoc networks and sensor networks, such as route discovery in several routing protocols,, sensor discovery in wireless sensor networks, and service discovery in wireless ad hoc networks. Usually, query packets are propagated inside the network to search for the targets. The target nodes will respond upon receiving the query packets.