WIFISIM: Simulating WiFi Probe Requests VIA AOSP Analysis And Device Behavior Modeling

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Authors: Lifei Hao, Yue Cheng, Min Wang, Bing Jia, Baoqi Huang
Cited by: 0
References: 17

Abstract

WiFi probe request (PR) frames encode fine-grained device interactions and serve as a critical basis for mobility and crowd analytics. However, pervasive MAC address randomization and the scarcity of labeled datasets hinder progress in PR-based studies. We introduce WiFiSim, a simulation framework that reconstructs PR generation through Android Open Source Project (AOSP) protocol analysis and finite-state device behavior modeling. WiFiSim identifies the key determinants of PR structure and timing while capturing realistic user-driven state transitions. Experiments show that WiFiSim achieves less than 5% deviation from real measurements in both distributional and temporal dynamics, scales to large-scale dataset synthesis, and enables reliable evaluation of downstream applications. Source code and sample datasets are publicly released to foster reproducible research.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Wireless Networks and Protocols Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks Wireless Communication Networks Research

Publication details

Journal / source
ICASSP 2026 - 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
Publisher
IEEE
Pages
20157–20161
Publication date
21 April 2026
Language
EN