Abstract
Resource discovery is an important fundamental aspect and a crucial task
in Mobile Peer-to-Peer Networks (MP2P). To compliment network dynamics
and churn, the unstructured search architecture is widely used. The key
goal of an efficient search scheme is to find the required resource with
minimal search latency, low overhead, and low power consumption to
better suit the nature of mobile nodes where resource constraints are
the major bottleneck. Resource discovery thus becomes an integral part
of the distributed architecture and resource sharing systems. In the
past, many resource discovery strategies are proposed for Mobile P2P
networks. A schematic and tabular classification of these systems
enables one to review the existing works under one umbrella. This
article presents an overview of such several different schemes for
performing resource discovery in the MP2P network broadly classified
under six different categories, i.e., centralized, unstructured,
structured, super node based, hybrid, and other general lookup schemes.
We also give a brief comparison of P2P, MANET, and P2P MANETs. Further,
we discuss various routing schemes in such an evolving network. In this
survey, we study and review the existing resource discovery techniques
in MP2P systems. The classification of each scheme with their advantages
and disadvantages are discussed. We highlight a few open research
issues, and brief the role of network topology and its structure on the
performance of the resource search protocols. Further, we also glimpse
on the security threats in MP2P networks and suggest their
countermeasures. And, finally, a summary of each method is given, along
with their lookup complexities.