BLESS: BLE-aided Swift Wi-Fi Scanning in Multi-protocol IoT Networks

Wi-Fi scanning that searches neighboring access points (APs) is an essential prerequisite for Wi-Fi operations such as initial association and handover. As the traffic demand increases, APs are more densely deployed and the number of operating Wi-Fi channels also increases, which, however, results in additional scanning delay and makes the scanning a burdensome task. In this paper, we note that the co-location of Wi-Fi protocol with BLE protocol is a common practice in IoT networks, and develop a Wi-Fi passive scanning framework that uses BLE to assist scanning. Although the framework has great potential to improve scanning performance without explicit message exchanges, there are technical challenges related to time synchronization and channel switching delay. We address the challenges and develop a practical passive scanning scheme, named BLESS-Sync. We verify its performance through testbed experiments and extensive simulations, and show that BLESS-Sync significantly outperforms legacy Wi-Fi scanning in terms of scanning delay and energy efficiency.