Content-centric Routing in Wi-Fi Direct Multi-group Networks

The added value of Device-to-Device (D2D) communication amounts to an efficient content discovery mechanism that enables users to steer their requests toward the node most likely to satisfy them. In this paper, we address the implementation of content-centric routing in a D2D architecture for Android devices based on WiFi Direct, a protocol recently standardised by the Wi-Fi Alliance. After discussing the creation of multiple D2D groups, we introduce novel paradigms featuring intra- and inter-group bidirectional communication. We then present the primitives involved in content advertising and requesting among members of the multi-group network. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our architecture in a real testbed involving Android devices in different group configurations. We also compare the results against the ones achievable exploiting Bluetooth technologies

Experimentation with MANETs of Smartphones

Mobile AdHoc NETworks (MANETs) have been identified as a key emerging technology for scenarios in which IEEE 802.11 or cellular communications are either infeasible, inefficient, or cost-ineffective. Smartphones are the most adequate network nodes in many of these scenarios, but it is not straightforward to build a network with them. We extensively survey existing possibilities to build applications on top of ad-hoc smartphone networks for experimentation purposes, and introduce a taxonomy to classify them. We present AdHocDroid, an Android package that creates an IP-level MANET of (rooted) Android smartphones, and make it publicly available to the community. AdHocDroid supports standard TCP/IP applications, providing real smartphone IEEE 802.11 MANET and the capability to easily change the routing protocol. We tested our framework on several smartphones and a laptop. We validate the MANET running off-the-shelf applications, and reporting on experimental performance evaluation, including network metrics and battery discharge rate.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Device-Aware Routing and Scheduling in Multi-Hop Device-to-Device Networks

The dramatic increase in data and connectivity demand, in addition to heterogeneous device capabilities, poses a challenge for future wireless networks. One of the promising solutions is Device-to-Device (D2D) networking. D2D networking, advocating the idea of connecting two or more devices directly without traversing the core network, is promising to address the increasing data and connectivity demand. In this paper, we consider D2D networks, where devices with heterogeneous capabilities including computing power, energy limitations, and incentives participate in D2D activities heterogeneously. We develop (i) a device-aware routing and scheduling algorithm (DARS) by taking into account device capabilities, and (ii) a multi-hop D2D testbed using Android-based smartphones and tablets by exploiting Wi-Fi Direct and legacy Wi-Fi connections. We show that DARS significantly improves throughput in our testbed as compared to state-of-the-art

Cooperative data transfers for 5G networks

The demand for higher capacity, higher data rate and larger bandwidth has driven the research and industrial world to develop next generation wireless communication technology, namely, the 5G. Among all the approaches proposed for such a high demand, only the cooperative communication approach promises to significantly improve of the performances (capacity, data rate, bandwidth, etc.) with a low cost. In this thesis, we propose a D2D communication scheme as a solution for the out-door scenario and a cooperative scheme among the access infrastructures as the in-door scenario solution. In the first part, we address the implementation of content-centric routing in a D2D architecture for Android devices based on WiFi Direct, a protocol recently standardised by the Wi-Fi Alliance. After discussing the creation of multiple D2D groups, we introduce novel paradigms featuring intra- and inter-group bidirectional communication. We then present the primitives involved in content advertising and requesting among members of the multi-group network. In addition to the communications, we also devise a mechanism to enable the devices to spontaneously establish the multi-group D2D network. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our architecture and the network formation mechanism in a real testbed consisting of Android devices. In the second part, we propose, implement and evaluate a bandwidth aggregation service for residential users that allows to improve the upload throughput of the ADSL connection by leveraging the unused bandwidth of neighboring users. The residential access gateway adopts the 802.11 radio interface to simultaneously serve the local home users and to share the broadband connectivity with neighboring access gateways. Differently from previous works, our aggregation scheme is transparent both for local users, who are not required to modify their applications or device drivers, and for neighboring users, who do not experience any meaningful performance degradation. In order to evaluate the achievable performance and tune the parameters driving the traffic balancing, we developed a fluid model which was shown experimentally to be very accurate. Our proposed scheme is amenable to efficient implementation on Linux networking stack. Indeed, we implemented it and tested in some realistic scenarios, showing an efficient exploitation of the whole available bandwidth, also for legacy cloud storage applications

Data Connectivity and Smart Group Formation in Wi-Fi Direct Multi-group Networks

Users of Device-to-Device (D2D) communication need efficient content discovery mechanisms to steer their requests toward the node in their neighborhood that is most likely to satisfy them. The problem is further compounded by the lack of a central coordination entity as well as by the inherent mobility of devices, which leads to volatile topologies. In this paper, we first discuss group-based communication among non-rooted Android devices using Wi-Fi Direct, a protocol recently standardized by the Wi-Fi Alliance. We propose intra- and inter-group communication methodologies, which we validate through a simple testbed where content-centric routing is used. Next, we address the autonomous formation of groups with the goal of achieving efficient device resource utilization as well as full connectivity. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our group formation procedure both in simulation and in a real testbed involving Android devices in different topologies

Enabling Multi-Hop Remote Method Invocation in Device-To-Device Networks

To avoid shrinking down the performance and preserve energy, low-end mobile devices can collaborate with the nearby ones by offloading computation intensive code. However, despite the long research history, code offloading is dilatory and unfit for applications that require rapidly consecutive requests per short period. Even though Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is apparently one possible approach that can address this problem, the RPC-based or message queue-based techniques are obsolete or unwieldy for mobile platforms. Moreover, the need of accessibility beyond the limit reach of the device-to-device (D2D) networks originates another problem. This article introduces a new software framework to overcome these shortcomings by enabling routing RPC architecture on multiple group device-to-device networks. Our framework provides annotations for declaring distribution decision and out-of-box components that enable peer-to-peer offloading, even when a client app and the service provider do not have a direct network link or Internet connectivity. This article also discusses the two typical mobile applications that built on top of the framework for chatting and remote browsing services, as well as the empirical experiments with actual test-bed devices to unveil the low overhead conduct and similar performance as RPC in reality