IEEE 802.11ax Spatial Reuse Improvement: An Interference-Based Channel-Access Algorithm

Abstract

Wi-Fi is the dominant way of connecting indoor mobile devices to the Internet. The main reason behind the huge adoption of this technology is the simplicity of the IEEE 802.11 protocols, which offer low-cost ownership and maintenance combined with the ability to provide high data rates to end users. The increasing demand in traffic volumes leads to the continuous deployment of access points (APs), resulting in densification of the IEEE 802.11 networks. This densification, instead of enhancing the efficiency of wireless local area networks (WLANs), degrades their overall performance due to cochannel interference between overlapped basic services sets (OBSSs). One of the main goals of the IEEE 802.11ax amendment now under development is to address the WLAN densification problem by improving spatial reuse (SR).