Gap Sense: Lightweight coordination of heterogeneous wireless devices

Coordination of co-located wireless devices is a fundamental function/requirement for reducing interference. However, different devices cannot directly coordinate with one another as they often use incompatible modulation schemes. Even for the same type (e.g., WiFi) of devices, their coordination is infeasible when neighboring transmitters adopt different spectrum widths. Such an incompatibility between heterogeneous devices may severely degrade the network performance. In this paper, we introduce Gap Sense (GSense), a novel mechanism that can coordinate heterogeneous devices without modifying their PHYlayer modulation schemes or spectrum widths. GSense prepends legacy packets with a customized preamble, which piggy-backs information to enhance inter-device coordination. The preamble leverages the quiet period between signal pulses to convey such information, and can be detected by neighboring nodes even when they have incompatible PHY layers. We have implemented and evaluated GSense on a software radio platform, demonstrating its significance and utility in three popular protocols. GSense is shown to deliver coordination information with close to 100% accuracy within practical SNR regions. It can also reduce the energy consumption by around 44%, and the collision rate by more than 88% in networks of heterogeneous transmitters and receivers.