Alljoyn based direct proximity servicedevelopment:
overview and prototype
Yufeng Wang
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecomm., China
Qun Jin
Waseda University, Japan
Li Wei
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecomm., China
Jianhua Ma
Hosei University, Japan
Abstract—
Proximity awareness, the ability to actively (or
passively) and continuously search for relevant value in one’s
physical proximity, is at the core of mobile revolution that is
changing the way we interact with people and things around us.
Especially, Device-to-Device (D2D) (peer-to-peer (P2P)) solutions
support infrastructure-free and self-organized proximity services,
and have great commercial potential from application viewpoint.
However, astonishingly, the glaring absence of the practical and
easy-to-use proximity service development framework is
alarming. This paper aims at investigating the Qualcomm
AllJoyn middleware, an open source peer-to-peer software
development framework for ad-hoc proximity based D2D
communication, and exploring how this middleware can enable
the development of distributed application in mobile social
networks in proximity (MSNP). Specifically, we thoroughly
overview the core concepts and basic components in AllJoyn
framework, and summarize the typical workflow of developing
AllJoyn based proximity application. Furthermore, an AllJoyn
based MSNP prototype, AllChat, is designed and implemented, in
which users can enjoy text chat and photo sharing with both
group and peer interaction modes in real time.
Keywords—AllJoyn; Device to Device; Proximiy Serivce;
Mobile social Network in Proxmity (MSNP)
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, Proximity Service (ProSe) have become a
promising mobile industry that is capable to create new mobile
service opportunities and offload traffic [1][2]. The purpose of
ProSe applications is to discover instances of the applications
running on devices within proximity of each other, and
ultimately exchange application-related contents.
Existing technologies used to serve the proximity
awareness can be broadly divided into over-the-top (OTT),
and Device-to-Device (D2D) (peer-to-peer (P2P)) solutions. In
the OTT model, a server located in the cloud receives periodic
location updates from user mobile devices (using GPS), e.g.,
Foursquare, etc. The server then determines proximity based
on location updates and interests. The constant location
updates not only result in significant battery impact because of
GPS power consumption and the periodic establishment of
cellular connections, but also causes serious privacy problem.
Moreover, OTT approaches may incur undesired network
overheads and latency for discovery and communication [3].
D2D schemes forego centralized processing in identifying
relevancy matches, instead autonomously determining
relevance at the device level by transmitting and monitoring
for relevant attributes. This approach offers crucial privacy
benefits. In addition, by keeping discovery on the device
rather than in the cloud, it allows for user level controls over
what is shared. Typical D2D enabled communications
technologies include Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi Direct [4].
It is expected this emerging D2D based proximity service
market would grow to $1.9 billion in revenues by 2016. This
trend not only provides new opportunities for application
vendors but also has the potential to disrupt the current social
networking market [5].
However, in practice, it is still not easy to quickly develop
D2D based proximity applications, due to lack of widely
accepted development framework. It is should be noted that
Qualcomm recently introduced AllJoyn, an open-source,
general networking framework which supports multiple direct
networking technologies (Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth, etc.) [6],
and enables ad hoc, proximity-based communication without
the use of an intermediary server. Now, this open project is
hosted by AllSeen Alliance (https://allseenalliance.org/), and
many consumer brands has signed on [7]. AllJoyn's vision is
to enable the Internet of everything near users, which provides
a software framework and a set of services that enable
interoperability among connected products and software
applications, across manufacturers, to create dynamic
proximal networks. The range of consumer products enabled
by AllJoyn is very wide: From the mobile devices consumers
always have with them, to the appliances and media
equipment in their homes, to the electronics in their cars and
the office equipment in their workplaces.
Technically, AllJoyn was developed as a mesh networking
service which offers automatic discovery and communication
for a number of different devices, agnostic of operating
system. And furthermore, the goal of AllJoyn is to be cross-
platform with support for Android, OS/X, Windows variants,
gaming engines and other thin clients.
This motivation of this paper is to thoroughly overview
AllJoyn framework, for ad-hoc proximity based D2D
communication, and explore how this middleware can
significantly facilitate the development of D2D based
proximity application. Especially, we design and implement a
prototype, AllChat for mobile social networks in proximity
(MSNP), which is explicitly defined as: wireless Peer-to-Peer
(P2P) network of spontaneously and opportunistically
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634
2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering
978-1-4799-7981-3/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSE.2014.138
634