A Connectivity-aware Method for Infrastructure-less Vehicular Cloud Service Discovery

In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), where interconnected devices require efficient communication and resource usage, service discovery poses a significant challenge in infrastructure-less Vehicular Cloud Networks (VCNs) due to their dynamic topology and intermittent connectivity. This paper proposes a distributed two-level directory approach to optimize service provisioning in such networks. In this approach, vehicles are first organized into clusters that are managed by Cluster Heads (CHs), responsible for maintaining first-level distributed directories. To strike a balance between efficiency and resource allocation, a novel scoring system is introduced to group clusters, forming second-level directories for broader visibility. Simulations evaluate the proposed approach against alternative methods, considering wait time to register, discovery delay, and hit percentage ratio under varying network conditions. The results demonstrate improved performance, thereby validating the advantages of hierarchical directories for service discovery in infrastructure-less VCNs.