Is There WiFi Yet? How Aggressive WiFi Probe Requests Deteriorate Energy and Throughput

WiFi offloading has emerged as a key component of cellular operator strategy to meet the data needs of rich, mobile devices. As such, mobile devices tend to aggressively seek out WiFi in order to provide improved user Quality of Experience (QoE) and cellular capacity relief. For home and work environments, aggressive WiFi scans can significantly improve the speed on which mobile nodes join the WiFi network. Unfortunately, the same aggressive behavior that excels in the home environment incurs considerable side effects across crowded wireless environments. In this paper, we show through empirical studies at both large (stadium) and small (laboratory) scales how aggressive WiFi scans can have significant implications for energy and throughput, both for the mobile nodes scanning and other nearby mobile nodes. We close with several thoughts on the disjoint incentives for properly balancing WiFi discovery speed and ultra-dense network interactions.