An Overview and Experiment on Wi-Fi Direct Connection Behaviour with Network Analysing Tools

Abstract

In the context of Wireless Collaboration Network (WCN), mobile devices with the wireless connection capability connect and communicate with each another for data exchange or resource sharing. The wireless technology used in forming the wireless network has been upgraded and improved throughout the years. Wi-Fi Direct is one of the well-established Wi-Fi P2P standards which can be found in almost all Android OS based mobile devices. In this work, the performance and operations of the Wi-Fi Direct standard when forming a P2P connection was reviewed by utilizing the network analysing tools. A systematic review was conducted by comparing the Wi-Fi Direct operations theoretically and practically. An overview of Wi-Fi Direct was presented, followed by experimental testing on the real-time P2P connection using physical mobile phones. The laptops and smartphones with the network traffic analyzer software (Wireshark and Wi-Fi Analyzer) installed were used to record and analyse the performance of the P2P connection activity. Finally, the findings and conclusions were discussed base on the statistical data collected from the experiment. It has been observed that there is a fixed pattern of SSID formed by Wi-Fi Direct framework regardless of the mobile devices brand, and the size of the Wi-Fi probes are device-dependent.