Free Side-channel Cross-technology Communication in Wireless Networks

Abstract

Enabling direct communication between wireless technologies immediately brings significant benefits including, but not limited to, cross-technology interference mitigation and context-aware smart operation. To explore the opportunities, we propose FreeBee -- a novel cross-technology communication technique for direct unicast as well as cross-technology/channel broadcast among three popular technologies of WiFi, ZigBee, and Bluetooth. The key concept of FreeBee is to modulate symbol messages by shifting the timings of periodic beacon frames already mandatory for diverse wireless standards. This keeps our design generically applicable across technologies and avoids additional bandwidth consumption (i.e., does not incur extra traffic), allowing continuous broadcast to safely reach mobile and/or duty-cycled devices. A new \emph{interval multiplexing} technique is proposed to enable concurrent bro\-adcasts from multiple senders or boost the transmission rate of a single sender. Theoretical and experimental exploration reveals that FreeBee offers a reliable symbol delivery under a second and supports mobility of 30mph and low duty-cycle operations of under 5%.