Experimenting Opportunistic Networks with WiFi Direct

{Marco Conti, Franca Delmastro, Giovanni Minutiello, Roberta Paris}

Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) National Research Council of Italy, Pisa

Master univ. di II livello in Future Broadband Networks (2013/14 A.Y.) Advanced Wireless Networks: Literature Review

Instructor: Prof. Carla-Fabianna Chiasserini

Student Zegeye, Wondimu K.

Outline
Introduction to Opportunistic Networks WiFi Direct Overview
Device Discovery and Group Formation Android and WiFi Direct

Experimental Setups Experimental Results Conclusions

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Opportunistic Networks
In an Opportunistic Network, Nodes are mobile/fixed. Communication possible even if no connecting route exists between nodes. Routes are built dynamically- i.e., communication path not predetermined. For the next hop, a node would be opportunistically chosen only if it would bring the message closer to final destination. Initial implementations relied on WiFi adhoc mode which are not able to manage infrastructured communication.
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N N N N N

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WiFi Direct Overview

WiFi Direct, initially called Wi-Fi P2P currently the referenced standard to support device-to-device (D2D) Communication on WiFi channels. Available in different mobile platforms Android 4.2(Jelly bean), Windows 8.1 WiFi-Direct devices communicate by establishing groups assuming the roles of Group Owner (GO) and/or Client. Device discovery involves Find and Scan phases in which P2P devices alternate search and listen states. Group Formation following the device discovery involves identifying the GO,CLIENTs and establishing connection.
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Device Discovery and Group Formation

WiFi Direct defines three different procedures for group formation.
Standard: GO negotiation through a three-way handshake. Autonomous: node elects itself as GO and announces its presence via beacon. Persistent: nodes can use their local information to rebuild.

Authentication procedure based on WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) mainly based on PIN code exchange once the GO is identified . Address configuration Phase : DHCP running on the GO.
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Discovery and Group Formation

Devices can be either GO or CLIENT
GO: acts as a SoftAP
CLIENT: associates itself to the GO and if it is legacy WiFi

client it doesnt belong to the group but they still consider the GO as an AP.

WiFi-Direct does not allow the transfer of GO role within a group.

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Android and WiFi Direct

WiFiP2P API of Android internally managed by WiFi Direct framework, wpa_supplicant process . wpa_supplicant maintains p2p_supplicant.conf file which stores local devices parameters and information. WiFiP2P APIs allows mobile applications to
discover, request information, and connect to other peers be notified of the success or failure of the previous operations register intents that notify the application of specific events detected by the framework through networking operations
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Two-Nodes Standard Group Formation

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Standard group formation

Two-Nodes Standard Group Formation

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P2P Standard Group Formation

Camps-Mur, Garcia-Saavedra, Serrano, Device to device communications with wifi direct: overview and experimentation, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, 2012 Zegeye,Wondimu Kassahun 10

Two nodes experiment : discovery and

group formation delays

autonomous: 1s, persistent [1.48s,15.35s] standard[1.5s,15.9s]

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autonomous: 3s (92%) + 5s(8%) standard: avg=12.26s, 9.5% (WPS) , 3.5%(others)

standard: Worst case 23s persistent and standard: 20%(higher times

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Three Nodes Simultaneous Group Formation

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Three Nodes Simultaneous Group

Formation

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Three Nodes Experiment

Times and errors during the three-nodes experiments.

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Incremental Group Formation

Instead of devices simultaneously trying to form a group and incremental group formation is more realistic. In this experiment, 6 Nodes which incrementally join the group with a 150s delay in between them.

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Incremental Join Procedure

(A /B) includes the GO negotiation procedure

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Conclusions
Experimental results shows the complexity of WiFi Direct to manage a variable number of nodes joining the same group for deploying opportunistic networks in a large scale. Dynamic parameters (such as nodes mobility, heterogeneous devices) should be considered for opportunistic networks. WiFi Direct integration with CAMEO (Context-Aware Middleware for Opportunistic Networks). By exploiting information related with the user and his/her device, WiFi Direct can pave a way for large scale Mobile Social Networks (MSN).

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Thank you! for your kind Attention.

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