Dynamic Discovery in Wireless Networks

In today’s world, wireless technology is widely employed because of its various benefits, such as mobility, low-cost deployment, scalability etc. But, at the same time, it suffers from a variety of issues ranging from speed and stability to security. In this thesis, we identify three major challenges and propose efficient solutions to mitigate them. First, the broadcast nature of wireless communication makes it inherently vulnerable to eavesdroppers. This makes it very difficult for a participant in a wireless network to discover and access services without also disclosing their identity and need for service. We develop a protocol based on partial (additive) homomorphic functions for private service discovery. Second, wireless networks are inherently ad hoc, with participants dynamically entering and leaving the network at different times. This asynchrony complicates the task of finding shared channels of communication. We present near-optimal schemes for asynchronous channel discovery. The third problem relates to the energy-efficiency of wireless transmissions. A typical wireless agent uses power from an on-board battery with limited power supply. In a multi-hop network it is a non-trivial problem to find relays and schedule non-interfering transmissions which conserve energy. We develop energy-efficient schemes for discovering next-hop relays.