Connecting to P2P groups together in Wi-Fi direct

Question

I have a scenario of two P2P groups ,each with one AP-client pair.They are independent P2P groups.I am curious to know what will happen if the two P2P groups come close to each other?

Answer 1

TLDR; The groups will not effect each other.

The WiFi Direct specifications states that devices must be in the FIND phase in order to find more peers to connect to, and even if they were, they wouldn't try to connect unless they were running an app that told them to disconnect from their current group and connect to a new group if they find one.

Two group owner devices can connect to each other if that feature is supported in the particular implementation of Wi-Fi Direct on the devices you are using, and if it supported by the Wi-Fi chip on those devices. According to this paper, it's possible for a device to be a group owner in one group, and a client in another group by time-sharing the Wi-Fi interface:

In order to act both as P2P Client and as P2P GO the laptop will typically alternate between the two roles by time-sharing the Wi-Fi interface.

On the other hand, it is impossible to have a group with two group owners. The Wi-Fi direct groups will still be separate from each other, there will simply be a group owner in one that is a client in the other.

Answer 2

According to this article

Some of the capabilities, such as concurrent P2P group and AP connections, will add complexity to product designs at both the IC and Wi-Fi subsystem levels. A product will have to maintain multiple MAC entities to support concurrent operations and most likely will require concurrent communications on multiple Wi-Fi channels. Clearly the feature will be valuable, but will it be worth the extra cost required to implement it? That’s up to the designer to decide. Over time, the market use, or not, of those features will make that decision easier.

So as far as I understood basic mode is single p2p group per device and since device bound to one group it will not jump in immediately to another group.

Android Classes Reference can be find here

Attempt of implementation can be found here

if device supports more then 1 group it will registered by 2nd group manager as available peer and then any member of group can TRY to connect to device. Device should have some WPS like security or for mobile phone popup dialog.

More on security from Wikipedia:

Wi-Fi Direct essentially embeds a software access point ("Soft AP"), into any device that must support Direct.[9] The soft AP provides a version of Wi-Fi Protected Setup with its push-button or PIN-based setup.

When a device enters the range of the Wi-Fi Direct host, it can connect to it, and then gather setup information using a Protected Setup-style transfer.[9] Connection and setup is so simplified that some suggest it may replace Bluetooth in some situations.[12]

Soft APs can be as simple or as complex as the role requires. A digital picture frame might provide only the most basic services needed to allow digital cameras to connect and upload images. A smart phone that allows data tethering might run a more complex soft AP that adds the ability to bridge to the Internet. The standard also includes WPA2 security and features to control access within corporate networks.[9] Wi-Fi Direct-certified devices can connect one-to-one or one-to-many and not all connected products need to be Wi-Fi Direct-certified. One Wi-Fi Direct enabled device can connect to legacy Wi-Fi certified devices.

The Wi-Fi Direct certification program is developed and administered by the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry group that owns the "Wi-Fi" trademark. The specification is available for purchase from the Wi-Fi Alliance.[13]