Switch: Enabling transmitter and receiver participation in seamless lightweight control
Chao-Fang Shih, Raghupathy Sivakumar · 2017
Lightweight control planes are techniques that create a control plane in WiFi networks without any additional spectrum requirements. Flash signals are an example of such control signals that exploit the link margin that typically exists in WiFi communication. In this paper we consider the problem of allowing transmitters and receivers of a transmission to exploit such control channels while the communication is ongoing. We present a mechanism called switch that facilitates switches in communication modes (Tx to Rx and vice-versa). We then use switch as the core building block to solve problems in WiFi networks such as starvation due to hidden terminals, early collision termination, and frequency backoffs. We rely on WARP radios to experimentally verify that switch is indeed possible, and use ns-3 simulations to study the impact of using switch to solve the aforementioned WiFi problems.