Sniffer-Channel Assignment in Multichannel Wireless Networks

Passive monitoring is a technique where a dedicated set of hardware devices called sniffers, are used to monitor activities in wireless networks. Distributed sniffers cooperatively monitor PHY and MAC characteristics, and interactions at various layers of the protocol stacks, both within a managed network and across multiple administrative domains. One important issue in designing a monitoring network is to determine which set of frequency bands each sniffer should operate on to maximize the total amount of information gathered. In this chapter, we discuss the sniffer-channel assignment problem in multichannel wireless networks and its formulation as a stochastic MAB problem. Compared to the basic stochastic MAB problem, the key challenge lies in the consideration of correlations among multiple sniffers’ observations. We present efficient learning algorithms and their regret bounds. Important issues that often arise from practical deployments such as switching overhead and computation efficiency are also considered.