Service Registration, Indexing, Discovery & Selection; An Architectural Survey Toward a GenAI-Driven Future

TL;DR

The paper analyzes SRIDS as the backbone of 6G service provisioning, surveying architecture options and standardization efforts, and identifying gaps toward a GenAI-enabled future. It introduces a four-class taxonomy (centralized, distributed, decentralized, hybrid) and proposes a hybrid architecture that combines centralized data management with distributed coordination, augmented by GenAI and blockchain to enable autonomous, scalable, and semantically aware service provisioning. Through a comprehensive literature review and gap analysis, it highlights reliability, scalability, determinism, efficiency, security, and semantic-awareness as key design objectives and shows how current approaches fall short in a fully integrated GenAI-enabled edge-cloud continuum. The proposed architecture and health-focused use case (Health Guardian) illustrate concrete pathways to achieve resilient, low-latency SRIDS operations, and the paper outlines future research directions spanning adaptive ML, predictive analytics, security enhancements, network challenges, and optimization techniques with practical implications for real-world 6G deployments.

Abstract

The emergence of sixth-generation (6G) networks marks a paradigm shift: by unifying an edge-to-cloud computing continuum with ultra-high-performance networking, 6G will enable capabilities far beyond today's boundaries. As use-case diversity grows exponentially and user adoption drives traffic to unprecedented and highly dynamic levels, novel service orchestration mechanisms are indispensable. In this paper, we adopt an architectural viewpoint, examining Service Registration, Indexing, Discovery, and Selection (SRIDS) as fundamental elements of 6G service provision. We first establish the theoretical foundations of SRIDS in 6G by defining its core concepts, detailing its end-to-end workflow, reviewing current standardization efforts, and projecting its future design objectives, including reliability, scalability, automaticity and adaptability, determinism, efficiency, sustainability, semantic-awareness, security, privacy, and trust. We then perform a comprehensive literature review and gap analysis encompassing both existing surveys and recent research efforts, identifying conceptual and methodological gaps that hinder unified SRIDS in 6G. Next, we introduce a taxonomy that classifies SRIDS mechanisms into centralized, distributed, decentralized, and hybrid architectures, and systematically examine the relevant studies within each category. Each work is evaluated against the extracted design objectives. Building on these findings, we propose a hybrid architectural framework, combining centralized data management to ensure consistency and agility with distributed coordination to enhance scalability in emerging 6G use cases. The framework incorporates innovative technologies, such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). We conclude by highlighting open challenges and suggesting directions for future research.

Figures (24)

• Figure 1: Emerging innovative use cases in the future, facilitated by the proliferation of 6G technologies.
• Figure 2: Mapping the future network: a breakdown of the 6G architecture and its core modules in the four layers: Infrastructure, Networking, Orchestration, and Application.
• Figure 3: The detailed workflow illustrates the SRIDS process, outlining the systematic stages for service and advertisement requests from users and service providers, respectively.
• Figure 4: Health Guardian, a continuous health-monitoring service.
• Figure 5: The challenges and primary design objectives associated with the implementation of SRIDS for future 6G use cases.