A Framework for Hotspot Support using Wi-Fi direct based Device-to-Device Links

Recent years have witnessed massive growth in the popularity of smart portable devices. These devices are fully powered with a number of network interfaces, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G, etc., in order to facilitate connectivity and enable the realization of computing and reachability everywhere and all the time. However, in areas with degraded cellular services and lack of Wi-Fi coverage, these devices do not allow connectivity to the Internet. Such a limitation can be particularly detrimental in application scenarios like search and rescue during and after a disastrous event, since trapped individuals cannot be reached. This paper presents a new framework for overcoming such limitation by introducing a hot-spot that may be accessible over device-to-device (D2D) communication links. Specifically, Wi-Fi direct (WFD) is exploited to form multi-hop peer-to-peer (P2P) routes to the introduced hot-spot. WFD supports the same speed and range of the normal Wi-Fi without the need of any infrastructure. WFD is among the emerging network technologies that are becoming almost standard on all new smart devices. By exploiting nearby devices, which have Internet access, our framework will enable users to publish contents. Our framework is validated through implementation using Android.