Device discovery and connection establishment approach using Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi for opportunistic networks

We propose a device discovery approach and connection establishment scheme for opportunistic networks using Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi as the underlying communication technology. We employ beacon stuffing method for a device to announce its existence in its neighborhood by broadcasting beacons stuffed with useful information in the field of SSID to remote devices. This method can allow a device to discover multiple devices and their running applications without performing connection establishment attempt while limiting the communication for device discovery only on MAC layer. In order to enhance energy efficiency, we also develop a score-based scanning schedule for device discovery operation. Once the neighbor is discovered, we present a connection establishment scheme between peers. We implement our proposed scheme on HP IPAQ 910 mobile phone equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Extensive experiments have been carried out to evaluate our approach. The experiment results show that our approach can achieve high energy efficiency and satisfactory peer connection speed and quality.