preprints.org > engineering > electrical and electronic engineering > doi: 10.20944/preprints202002.0189.v1

Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Version 1 : Received: 12 February 2020 / Approved: 14 February 2020 / Online: 14 February 2020 (04:54:35 CET)

Wi-Fi tethering using a mobile device (e.g., a smartphone or a tablet) as a hotspot for other devices has become a common practice. Despite the potential benefits of Wi-Fi tethering, the open source nature of mobile operating systems (e.g., Google Android) can be abused by a selfish device to manipulate channel-access parameters to gain an unfair advantage in throughput performance. This can cause serious performance problems within a well-planned Wi-Fi network due to an unauthorized selfish or misconfigured tethering device interfering with nearby well-planned access points (APs). In this paper, we demonstrate that the selfish behavior of a tethering node that adjusts the clear channel assessment (CCA) threshold has strong adverse effects in a multi-AP network, while providing the selfish node a high throughput gain. To mitigate this problem, we present a passive online detection scheme that identifies the network condition and detects selfish tethering nodes with high accuracy by exploiting the packet loss information of on-going transmissions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research to consider the problem of detecting a selfish tethering node in managed Wi-Fi networks.

network monitoring; spectrum sharing; Wi-Fi tethering; sensing of misbehavior

Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

* All users must log in before leaving a comment