Cooperation Between Stations in Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces Cooperative Roaming, a method enabling mobile nodes in wireless networks to collaborate and share information, significantly reducing handoff times for seamless connectivity without infrastructure changes.

Contribution

It presents a novel cooperative approach for mobile nodes to improve handoff performance in wireless networks, achieving sub-20 millisecond handoff times without infrastructure modifications.

Findings

Achieves less than 16 ms handoff in open networks.

Achieves about 21 ms handoff in IEEE 802.11i networks.

Applicable to various mobile network types.

Abstract

In a wireless network, mobile nodes (MNs) repeatedly perform tasks such as layer 2 (L2) handoff, layer 3 (L3) handoff and authentication. These tasks are critical, particularly for real-time applications such as VoIP. We propose a novel approach, namely Cooperative Roaming (CR), in which MNs can collaborate with each other and share useful information about the network in which they move. We show how we can achieve seamless L2 and L3 handoffs regardless of the authentication mechanism used and without any changes to either the infrastructure or the protocol. In particular, we provide a working implementation of CR and show how, with CR, MNs can achieve a total L2+L3 handoff time of less than 16 ms in an open network and of about 21 ms in an IEEE 802.11i network. We consider behaviors typical of IEEE 802.11 networks, although many of the concepts and problems addressed here apply to any kind of mobile network.