Evaluating Methods for Enabling Continuous Operation in Dynamic WiFi Direct Networks

Designing protocols for optimizing and controlling Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) has been an active subject of research for many years; however, the autonomous configuration and maintenance of MANETs remains an open problem. WiFi Direct, a WiFi-Alliance standard facilitating peer-to-peer communication without the need for traditional WiFi access points, has been adopted on a variety of platforms including, phones, tablets, printers, smart TVs, and many other Linux based operating systems. Nevertheless, current WiFi Direct implementations rely on human intervention to restore connectivity in the event of a network failure. This work evaluates several of our previously proposed schemes for the autonomous creation and maintenance of WiFi Direct groups with the goal of quickly restoring communication when the network fails. We compare two methods for reforming a network with an approach that maintains two simultaneous WiFi Direct groups, allowing for the diversion of traffic when one of the groups fails. Each method is implemented and evaluated on a testbed of Raspberry Pi 3B single board computers making use of external wireless cards. Finally, we present scenarios that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each method.