Cooperative device discovery for multi-interface self-organizing networks

For device-to-device communications, a device must locate neighbor devices on a certain channel within a short period to establish a communication link. When the channel information is not provided, a rendezvous technique can be adapted to resolve the issue of device discovery. Unlike existing approaches that have considered the rendezvous problem for a flat network and a single interface, the proposed approach considers a hierarchical network where nodes have different ranks and multiple interfaces. We extend the jump-and-stay rendezvous algorithm for multiple interfaces and divide the interfaces into two types: standby and scan interfaces. Scan interfaces follow the extended pattern of the jump-and-stay algorithm. Standby interfaces remain on a selected channel for a round of slots until rendezvous with other nodes. To determine the interface type of each node, we consider the rank of a node such that a higher-ranked node is assigned more standby interfaces. Based on this framework, we propose a cooperative rendezvous algorithm where a node rebroadcasts the channel information of a higher-ranked node together with its rendezvous message. Our simulation results confirm that the proposed rendezvous algorithm achieves superior performance compared to conventional methods.