Optimized group owner selection in WiFi direct networks

Device-to-Device communication is an essential component in the evolution towards the Internet of Things. The relatively new WiFi-Direct standard allows devices to communicate directly over the well established IEEE 802.11 protocol without the need for an intermediate access point. The increased range and bandwidth advantage of WiFi-Direct over existing short-range technologies such as Bluetooth and Zigbee allows a whole new class of applications to benefit from cooperation. Within a WiFi-Direct network, one device is elected as the group owner and acts as a central hub for all communications. The standard does not dictate a group owner selection strategy and leaves the decision to be taken at the application layer. In this work, we present an optimized strategy for group owner selection within WiFi-Direct networks that aims at maximizing the overall network performance in terms of increased throughput. Moreover, we propose a low complexity multi-device group owner negotiation protocol that runs at the application layer and extends the existing WiFi-Direct protocol, which limits group owner negotiation to two devices only. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed selection strategy in achieving near-optimum results.