Ph.D. Dissertation Defense

Infrastructure-less Group Data
Sharing using Smart Devices

Ahmed Shahin

2:30 Tuesday, 8 December 2015, ITE-346

Advances in pervasive communication technology have enabled many unconventional applications that facilitate and improve the safety and quality of life in modern society. Among emerging applications is situational awareness where individuals and first-responders receive timely alerts about serious events that could have caused the interruption of the services provided by the communication infrastructure such as cellular networks, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc. Another example is when exchanging road conditions between peer-to-peer networked vehicles without the involvement of roadside units. The popularity of smart portable devices such as iPhone and Android powered phones and tablets has made them an attractive choice that can play a role in the realization of these emerging applications. These devices support multiple communication standards and thus enable Device-to-Device (D2D) data exchange at an increased level of convenience. By using technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi ad-hoc mode and Wi-Fi Direct, these devices are able to communicate without the need for any communication infrastructures. In addition, many of these devices are equipped with sensors that can provide a wealth of information about the surroundings once their readings are aggregated.

However, most existing protocols for data sharing among devices either require an internet connection, which may not be available and may incur extra costs in some cases, or suffer from the device’s operating system limitations. Actually there is no existing solution that allows a set of devices to start sharing data dynamically without forcing the users to apply an elaborate procedure for setting up a group. These shortcomings render existing solutions unsuitable for emergency cases. In this dissertation proposal, we tackle such a problem by developing a framework for enabling data exchange in a cost-effective and timely manner through the establishment of peer-to-peer links among smart devices. In addition, our framework opts to minimize the user required interaction for setting up a connection and overcome the limitations of the operating system.

Our framework consists of a set of protocols for group data exchange using Wi-Fi Direct on Android devices. First we present an Efficient and Lightweight protocol for peer-to-peer Networking of Android smart devices over Wi-Fi Direct (ELN). ELN main goal is to overcome the Wi-Fi Direct support limitations in Android, thus allowing the devices in one Wi-Fi Direct group to communicate together. The ELN protocol is validated by implementing a group chatting application. In addition, we present a protocol for Alert Dissemination using Service discovery (ADS) in Wi-Fi Direct. ADS uses the service discovery feature of Wi-Fi Direct for distributing alerts to nearby devices without requiring any prior connections and thus avoids the setup delay in creating Wi-Fi Direct groups and the limitations of multi-group connectivity in Android. ADS is validated by implementing a hazard propagation application for Android. Finally, we present an Efficient Multi-group formation and Communication (EMC) protocol for Wi-Fi Direct. EMC exploits the battery specifications of the devices to qualify potential group owners and enable dynamic formation of efficient groups. Moreover, EMC allows data exchange between different Wi-Fi direct groups. Part of our implementation of EMC in Android involves the modification of the Android source code to allow multi-group support. A chat application is developed to validate EMC.

To complete the dissertation, we plan to extend EMC by replacing the static assignment of devices’ addresses in our current implementation with an IP address negotiation protocol that runs before creating groups. Such an extension would give greater flexibility in adapting EMC. In addition, we plan to define some criteria for selecting proxy members in order to allow maximum coverage and allow the D2D communication to span a larger geographical area. In addition, we will develop a simulator to do large scale testing for the proposed framework. Finally, we would like to explore the use of dual transceivers in order to increase the robustness of D2D connections when the wireless channels are subject to varying level of interference; particularly we like to investigate the integration of Bluetooth Low Energy within our framework to enable group membership of nodes that do not have Wi-Fi Direct or suffer interference that makes the Wi-Fi Direct links unstable.

Committee: Drs. Mohamed Younis (Chair), Charles Nicholas, Chintan Patel, Tinoosh Mohsenin

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