Design and empirical validation of a stock-Android software architecture for Wi-Fi Direct multi-group communication

TL;DR

This paper presents SWARNET, a software architecture enabling multi-group Wi-Fi Direct communication on stock Android devices without rooting, validated through experiments on Samsung smartphones demonstrating operational feasibility.

Contribution

The paper introduces SWARNET, a novel layered architecture that achieves multi-group Wi-Fi Direct communication on stock Android devices without OS modifications.

Findings

SWARNET remained operational across all tested scenarios.

Peak throughput was approximately 19.7 Mbit/s in the best case.

Packet loss reached about 19-20% under high load.

Abstract

Context: Stock Android exposes Wi-Fi Direct peer-to-peer APIs, but it does not provide application-transparent communication across multiple Wi-Fi Direct groups. For developers working on non-rooted devices, the main obstacle is architectural: interface-specific transport contexts, relay roles, and forwarding state must be coordinated entirely at application level. Objectives: This paper investigates whether multi-group Wi-Fi Direct communication can be realized as a stock-Android software architecture while preserving forwarding-state consistency and remaining compatible with Android 11 devices without rooting or operating-system modification. Methods: We design SWARNET, a layered artifact composed of a Flutter application layer, a Kotlin native networking layer, interface-bound P2P and legacy-Wi-Fi sockets, relay-state management, and subscription-based forwarding tables. We evaluate the implemented artifact on five stock Samsung Galaxy A10s smartphones across four single-group and multi-group scenarios using archived throughput and packet-loss measurements. Results: The artifact remained operational in all four scenarios. Peak receiver throughput observed from the archived curves was approximately 19.7~Mbit/s in 2d1g, 17.9~Mbit/s in 3d1g, 16.1~Mbit/s in 4d2g, and 16.0~Mbit/s in 5d3g. Packet loss increased with forwarding complexity, reaching about 19--20\% only in the highest-load region of the three-group case. Conclusion: The contribution is an implementable software architecture and a feasibility study showing that stock-Android multi-group Wi-Fi Direct communication can be engineered at application level on non-rooted devices. The results support architectural feasibility in a small static testbed; they do not establish broad resilience, scalability, or deployment readiness.