ZiFi: Exploiting Cross-Technology Interference Signatures for Wireless LAN Discovery

Wi-Fi networks have enjoyed an unprecedent penetration rate in recent years. However, due to the limited coverage, existing Wi-Fi infrastructure only provides intermittent connectivity for mobile users. Once leaving the current network coverage, Wi-Fi clients must actively discover new Wi-Fi access points (APs), which wastes the precious energy of mobile devices. Although several solutions have been proposed to address this issue, they either require significant modifications to existing network infrastructures or rely on context information that is not available in unknown environments. In this work, we develop a system called ZiFithat utilizes ZigBee radios to identify the existence of Wi-Fi networks through unique interference signatures generated by Wi-Fi beacons. We develop a new digital signal processing algorithm called common multiple folding (CMF) that accurately amplifies periodic beacons in Wi-Fi interference signals. ZiFi also adopts a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector that can minimize the false negative (FN) rate of Wi-Fi beacon detection while satisfying the user-specified upper bound on false positive (FP) rate. We have implemented ZiFi on two platforms, a Linux netbook integrating a TelosB mote through the USB interface, and a Nokia N73 smartphone integrating a ZigBee card through the miniSD interface. Our experiments show that, under typical settings, ZiFi can detect Wi-Fi APs with high accuracy (<;5 percent total FP and FN rate), short delay (~780 ms), and little computation overhead.

1. Introduction

In recent years, 802.11-based wireless LANs, also known as Wi-Fi networks, have enjoyed an unprecedent penetration rate. In particular, they are increasing deployed to provide Internet access in mobile environments. However, due to the limited coverage, existing Wi-Fi infrastructure is only capable of providing intermittent connectivity for the users with high mobility. Wi-Fi-enabled devices (e.g., laptops and smartphones) must actively discover new Wi-Fi access points (APs) once they leave the coverage of current network. However, this approach wastes the precious energy of mobile devices due to excessive listening and scanning operations of Wi-Fi network interface cards (NICs).