Group owner election in Wi-Fi direct

Abstract

Wi-Fi Direct is a new protocol that standardizes the direct communication between Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices without requiring an access point. The specification proposes enhanced peer-to-peer functions to be supported by the mobile devices. A P2P device becomes a group owner for a set of client devices forming a P2P Group. All devices in the P2P Group then communicate to each other and connect to outside world through the elected group owner. Worth mentioning, the specification does not define any eligibility criteria to elect the better or more capable device as group owner. The group owner election is established through the group owner negotiation procedure, where devices exchange their Intent Value, which represents their willingness to act as a group owner. The device with a higher Intent Value is elected to be a group owner. The group owner negotiation procedure is limited to two devices, which reduces the chance to elect the most capable P2P device. The paper outlines the significance of various parameters to consider while electing a group owner. Then to further increase the probability of most capable device to become group owner, a new election method is proposed instead of the standard Group Owner negotiation between two devices.