Control OBSS/PD Sensitivity Threshold for IEEE 802.11ax BSS Color

Abstract

IEEE 802.11ax Spatial Reuse (SR) is a new category in the IEEE 802.11 family, aiming at improving the spectrum efficiency and the network performance in dense deployments. The main and perhaps the only SR technique in that amendment is the Basic Service Set (BSS) Color. It aims at increasing the number of concurrent transmissions in a specific area, based on a newly defined Overlapping BSS/Preamble-Detection (OBSS/PD) threshold and the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) from Overlapping BSSs (OBSSs). In this paper, we propose a Control OBSS/PD Sensitivity Threshold (COST) algorithm for adjusting OBSS/PD threshold based on the interference level and RSSI from the associated recipient(s). In contrast to the Dynamic Sensitivity Control (DSC) algorithm that was proposed for setting OBSS/PD, COST is fully aware of any changes in OBSSs and can be applied to any IEEE 802.11ax node. Simulation results in various scenarios, show a clear performance improvement of up to 57% gain in throughput over a conservative fixed OBSS/PD for the legacy BSS Color and DSC.