Adapting the beacon interval for opportunistic network communications

Abstract

A dominant trend nowadays is the rapid spread of small devices, such as laptops and smartphones, carried by people. The users' need for applications with local high-bandwidth requirements and due to limited wireless Internet access, a challenge if identified which is critical for the success of applications such as local wireless data synchronization, gaming or communication. Opportunistic networks provide a solution to localized wireless communication between smart devices. The opportunistic communication between two encountered devices are commonly accomplished by using a radio technology such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. One issue involved in device-to-device communication is improving the connection establishment in a mobile opportunistic network with minimum resource consumption. This paper includes a proposal and empirical analysis of the beaconing in opportunistic communication using Wi-Fi technology in the infrastructure mode. With our analysis of the MAC layer, we aim at improving the connection establishment between two adjacent nodes. Precisely, the broadcasting beacon frame is sent by the master device to discover neighbors (stations) at fixed intervals. The contribution of this paper is to propose and evaluate a double hundred kilo beacon interval for opportunistic network communications. The traditional beacon interval is target for low-latency Wi-Fi applications and less suitable for opportunistic networking. The opportunistic networking stations have limited resources and assume delay tolerant applications. Our experiments show that the proposed interval provides a significant reduction in the energy consumption and bandwidth overhead compared to the commonly used beacon interval.