Performance Evaluation of WiFi Direct Multi Hop Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract

Mobile devices have become the most popular way to access the Internet and are designed to leverage the availability of different wireless technologies, like cellular and WiFi. When multiple wireless networks are available at the same time, it is essential to obtain the best connection, whether this is a direct path through infrastructure networks or an indirect path using multi hop ad-hoc networks. In this paper, we use an Android application to create and evaluate the performance of indirect connections to the Internet through a multi hop ad-hoc network based on WiFi Direct, and compare their performance to direct WiFi and LTE cellular connections. Moreover, we analyze the energy consumption of the multi hop ad-hoc networks using energy consumption models for transmitting and receiving data using LTE, WiFi and WiFi Direct. Experimental results show that extending access to the Internet through a multi hop adhoc network achieves higher throughput and is more energyefficient when transferring larger data sizes compared to when transferring smaller data sizes. Finally, we show that WiFi Direct multi hop ad-hoc networks with WiFi connection from the gateway node are more energy efficient to upload and download data compared to direct LTE connection up to 7 and 3 hops, respectively.