• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.558-567
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• 2015

In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of mobile-network-enabled smart objects, such as smart-phones and smart-watches, that form a cyber-physical integrated network to connect the cyber and physical worlds through the capabilities of sensing, communicating, and computing. Discovery of the relationship between smart objects is a critical and nontrivial task in cyber-physical integrated network applications. Aiming to find the most stable relationship in the heterogeneous and dynamic cyber-physical network, we propose a distributed and efficient relationship-discovery algorithm, called dynamically maximizing remaining unchanged time with minimum connected dominant set (DMRUT-MCDS) for constructing a backbone with the smallest scale infrastructure. In our proposed algorithm, the impact of the duration of the relationship is considered in order to balance the size and sustain time of the infrastructure. The performance of our algorithm is studied through extensive simulations and the results show that DMRUT-MCDS performs well in different distribution networks.