MAGNET: A middleware for the proximal interaction of devices based on Wi-Fi direct

This paper presents MAGNET, a novel middleware infrastructure that exploits Wi-Fi Direct to provide a reliable and stable communication means for large numbers of mobile devices. This self-organizing middleware abstracts the multi-hop communication process by autonomously maintaining connectivity among devices. MAGNET also provides a discovery mechanism that exploits the MAC address of the different devices or the services they offer. MAGNET was evaluated both on our WiDiSi simulator for Wi-Fi Direct-based systems, and on real Android devices. The results we obtained in our evaluation illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed middleware, both in discovering and maintaining connectivity in large-scale dynamic scenarios.