A Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem Approach to Virtual Device Composition

The dynamic composition of networked appliances, or virtual devices, enables users to generate complex, strong, and specific systems. Current MANET-based composition schemes use service discovery mechanisms that depend on periodic service advertising by controlled broadcast, resulting in the unnecessary depletion of node resources. The assumption that, once generated, a virtual device is to remain static is false; the device should gracefully degrade and upgrade along with the conditions in the user's environment, particularly the network's current performance requirements. Presently, schemes for infrastructure-less virtual device composition and management do not consider this adaptation. We present a distributed constraint satisfaction problem (distCSP) for virtual device composition in MANETs that addresses these issues together with simulations that show its effectiveness and efficiency.