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