• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.171-184
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• 2009

Since the development of the Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs), the distributed lookup services are one of the hot topics in the networking area. The main reason of this popularity is the simplicity of the lookup structure. However, the simple key based search mechanism makes the so called "keyword" based search difficult if not impossible. Thus, the applicability of the DHTs is limited to certain areas. In this paper. we find that DHTs can be used as the ubiquitous sensor network (USN) metadata lookup service across a large number of sensor networks. The popularity of the Ubiquitous Sensor Network has motivated the development of the USN middleware services for the sensor networks. One of the key functionalities of the USN middleware service is the lookup of the USN metadata, by which users get various information about the sensor network such as the type of the sensor networks and/or nodes, the residual of the batteries, the type of the sensor nodes. Traditional distributed hash table based lookup systems are good for one sensor network. However, as the number of sensor network increases, the need to integrate the lookup services of many autonomous sensor networks so that they can provide the users an integrated view of the entire sensor network. In this paper, we provide a hybrid lookup model, in which the autonomous lookup services are combined together and provide seamless services across the boundary of a single lookup services. We show that the hybrid model can provide far better lookup performance than a single lookup system.