On-demand content-centric wireless networking

Abstract

Typical scenarios in the city or on campus, show a high proliferation of wireless communication devices such as smartphones, laptops or netbooks. Wireless 802.11 networks between these devices allow for a spontaneous exchange of content or provision of services without the need for infrastructure-based services. However, the above mentioned proliferation of devices and therefore large number of networks hinders users in identifying and selecting the network that serves a specific request. We propose an approach to client-driven content-centric wireless networking in which the user specifically signals his request for a user, content item or service via 802.11 management frames. Upon reception of these frames, wireless devices that serve this request establish a dedicated wireless network on-demand. Our approach seamlessly integrates into the 802.11 association process and therefore provides support for unmodified wireless devices. By leveraging the wireless broadcast medium, we achieve pervasive service and peer discovery without the overhead of iterating through existing networks or running a traditional service discovery protocol.