Multi-link operation (MLO) is a new and essential mechanism of IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (Wi-Fi 7) that can increase throughput and decrease latency in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). The MLO enables a Multi-Link Device (MLD) to perform Simultaneous Transmission and Reception (STR) in different frequency bands. However, not all MLDs can support STR due to cross-link or in-device coexistence interference, while an STR-unable MLD (NSTR-MLD) can transmit multiple frames simultaneously in more than two links. This study focuses on the problems when NSTR-MLDs share a link with Single-Link Devices (SLDs). We propose a Contention-Less Synchronous Transmission (CLST) mechanism to improve fairness between NSTR-MLDs and SLDs while increasing the total network throughput. The proposed mechanism classifies links as MLD Dominant Links (MDLs) and Heterogeneous Coexistence Links (HCLs). In the proposed mechanism, an NSTR-MLD obtains a Synchronous Transmission Token (STT) through a virtual channel contention in the HCL but does not actually transmit a frame in the HCL, which is compensated for by a synchronous transmission triggered in the MDL. Moreover, the CLST mechanism allows additional subsequent transmissions up to the accumulated STT without further contention. Extensive simulation results confirm the outstanding performance of the CLST mechanism in terms of total throughput and fairness compared to existing synchronous transmission mechanisms.

In this study, we address the problem of downlink throughput degradation in dense wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard. We demonstrate that this problem essentially results from the asymmetric characteristic of carrier sense multiple access between downlink and uplink transmissions in infrastructure WLANs, and it is exacerbated by a dynamic sensitivity control algorithm that aims to improve spatial reuse (SR) in IEEE 802.11ax. To solve this problem, we propose the <i>interference-aware two-level differentiation</i> mechanism consisting of the <i>dual channel access</i> (DCA) and <i>supplemental power control</i> (SPC) schemes. The proposed mechanism introduces a new measure called a spatial reusability indicator, which roughly estimates the signal-to-interference ratio from the received signal strength of beacon frames. Based on this measure, stations (STAs) are classified into the following two categories: <i>spatial reusable STAs</i> (SR-STAs) and <i>non-spatial reusable STAs</i> (NSR-STAs). Because SR-STAs are more robust to interference than NSR-STAs, the DCA scheme prioritizes transmissions to SR-STAs over those to NSR-STAs by using differentiated carrier sensing thresholds. Moreover, the SPC scheme selectively increases the transmission power to NSR-STAs to compensate for transmission failure due to interference. By combining the SPC and DCA schemes, the proposed mechanism effectively differentiates the downlink transmissions to SR-STAs and NSR-STAs in terms of channel access and transmission power, and it can boost the possibility of successful SR. The proposed mechanism can be easily implemented in IEEE 802.11ax without any complex calculation or significant signaling overhead. Moreover, we provide a practical guideline to determine appropriate parameter values for use in the proposed mechanism. The extensive simulation results obtained in this study confirm that the proposed mechanism increases the downlink throughput by more than several times without decreasing the overall throughput, compared to the existing mechanisms, and it maintains fairness between SR-STAs and NSR-STAs in terms of the ratio of successful transmission.

Multi-link operation (MLO) is a new and essential mechanism of IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (Wi-Fi 7) that can increase throughput and decrease latency in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). The MLO enables a Multi-Link Device (MLD) to perform Simultaneous Transmission and Reception (STR) in different frequency bands. However, not all MLDs can support STR due to cross-link or in-device coexistence interference, while an STR-unable MLD (NSTR-MLD) can transmit multiple frames simultaneously in more than two links. This study focuses on the problems when NSTR-MLDs share a link with Single-Link Devices (SLDs). We propose a Contention-Less Synchronous Transmission (CLST) mechanism to improve fairness between NSTR-MLDs and SLDs while increasing the total network throughput. The proposed mechanism classifies links as MLD Dominant Links (MDLs) and Heterogeneous Coexistence Links (HCLs). In the proposed mechanism, an NSTR-MLD obtains a Synchronous Transmission Token (STT) through a virtual channel contention in the HCL but does not actually transmit a frame in the HCL, which is compensated for by a synchronous transmission triggered in the MDL. Moreover, the CLST mechanism allows additional subsequent transmissions up to the accumulated STT without further contention. Extensive simulation results confirm the outstanding performance of the CLST mechanism in terms of total throughput and fairness compared to existing synchronous transmission mechanisms.

In this study, we address the problem of downlink throughput degradation in dense wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard. We demonstrate that this problem essentially results from the asymmetric characteristic of carrier sense multiple access between downlink and uplink transmissions in infrastructure WLANs, and it is exacerbated by a dynamic sensitivity control algorithm that aims to improve spatial reuse (SR) in IEEE 802.11ax. To solve this problem, we propose the <i>interference-aware two-level differentiation</i> mechanism consisting of the <i>dual channel access</i> (DCA) and <i>supplemental power control</i> (SPC) schemes. The proposed mechanism introduces a new measure called a spatial reusability indicator, which roughly estimates the signal-to-interference ratio from the received signal strength of beacon frames. Based on this measure, stations (STAs) are classified into the following two categories: <i>spatial reusable STAs</i> (SR-STAs) and <i>non-spatial reusable STAs</i> (NSR-STAs). Because SR-STAs are more robust to interference than NSR-STAs, the DCA scheme prioritizes transmissions to SR-STAs over those to NSR-STAs by using differentiated carrier sensing thresholds. Moreover, the SPC scheme selectively increases the transmission power to NSR-STAs to compensate for transmission failure due to interference. By combining the SPC and DCA schemes, the proposed mechanism effectively differentiates the downlink transmissions to SR-STAs and NSR-STAs in terms of channel access and transmission power, and it can boost the possibility of successful SR. The proposed mechanism can be easily implemented in IEEE 802.11ax without any complex calculation or significant signaling overhead. Moreover, we provide a practical guideline to determine appropriate parameter values for use in the proposed mechanism. The extensive simulation results obtained in this study confirm that the proposed mechanism increases the downlink throughput by more than several times without decreasing the overall throughput, compared to the existing mechanisms, and it maintains fairness between SR-STAs and NSR-STAs in terms of the ratio of successful transmission.

IEEE 802.11ax uplink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based random access (UORA) is a new feature for random channel access in wireless local area networks (WLANs). Similar to the legacy random access scheme in WLANs, UORA performs the OFDMA backoff (OBO) procedure to access the channel and decides on a random OBO counter within the OFDMA contention window (OCW) value. An access point (AP) can determine the OCW range and inform each station (STA) of it. However, how to determine a reasonable OCW range is beyond the scope of the IEEE 802.11ax standard. The OCW range is crucial to the UORA performance, and it primarily depends on the number of contending STAs, but it is challenging for the AP to accurately and quickly estimate or keep track of the number of contending STAs without the aid of a specific signaling mechanism. In addition, the one for this purpose incurs an additional delay and overhead in the channel access procedure. Therefore, the performance of a UORA scheme can be degraded by an improper OCW range, especially when the number of contending STAs changes dynamically. We first observed the effect of OCW values on channel efficiency and derived its optimal value from an analytical model. Next, we proposed a simple yet effective OBO control scheme where each STA determines its own OBO counter in a distributed manner rather than adjusting the OCW value globally. In the proposed scheme, each STA determines an appropriate OBO counter depending on whether the previous transmission was successful or not so that collisions can be mitigated without leaving OFDMA resource units unnecessarily idle. The results of a simulation study confirm that the throughput of the proposed scheme is comparable to the optimal OCW-based scheme and is improved by up to 15 times compared to the standard UORA scheme.

In this paper, we consider relay-based broadcasting in wireless ad hoc networks, which can enable various emerging services in the Internet of Things (IoT). In this kind of traffic dissemination scheme, also known as flooding, all the nodes not only receive frames but also rebroadcast them. However, without an appropriate relay suppression, a broadcast storm problem arises, i.e., the transmission may fail due to severe collisions and/or interference, many duplicate frames are unnecessarily transmitted, and the traffic dissemination time increases. To mitigate the broadcast storm problem, we propose a reasonable criterion to restrict the rebroadcasting named the duplication ratio. Based on this, we propose an efficient mechanism consisting of duplication suppression and re-queuing schemes. The former discards duplicate frames proactively in a probabilistic manner to decrease the redundancy whereas the latter provides a secondary transmission opportunity reactively to compensate for the delivery failure. Moreover, to apply the duplication ratio practically, we propose a simple method to approximate it based on the number of adjacent nodes. The simulation study confirms that the proposed mechanism tightly ensured the reliability and decreased the traffic dissemination time by up to 6-fold compared to conventional mechanisms.

In dense wireless local area networks (WLANs), the primary causes of interference and hindrance to spatial reuse are the well-known hidden node problem (HNP) and the exposed node problem (ENP). In this paper, we propose a joint solution to these problems. The proposed mechanism, referred to as Probe/PreAck (PR/PA), utilizes the concept of a two-way handshake for efficient channel reservation and spatial reuse by means of two control frames called PR and PA. The PR frame is designed for the semi-reservation of a channel initiated by a transmitting node, while the PA frame is used for the receiver-oriented permission of a channel reservation. Once a transmitting node advertises a PR frame, the channel is temporarily reserved, and the channel reservation is finally completed after the node receives the corresponding PA frame. Otherwise, the channel reservation is immediately released. Unlike the ready-tosend/clear-to-send mechanism, which is a well-known solution to HNP, the proposed mechanism does not unnecessarily prevent nodes from accessing the channel but selectively blocks transmitting and receiving nodes when they overhear the PA and PR frames transmitted by neighboring nodes, respectively. In this way, the proposed PR/PA mechanism effectively deals with both HNP and ENP in a unified framework. We further enhance the PR/PA mechanism by devising an immediate destination switching scheme, which is implemented in access points (APs) to improve the downlink throughput. If an AP fails to complete the exchange of PR and PA frames with a specific destination, it sends another PR frame to a different destination node without performing a new back-off procedure. Moreover, we adopt the transmission time control scheme to assure successful spatial reuse in multiple basic service set (BSS) WLANs. By adjusting the transmission time of the data frames simultaneously transmitted in different BSSs, severe interference between the data and acknowledgment frames can be avoided. The results of a simulation study confirmed that the proposed mechanism outperformed conventional mechanisms in dense multi-BSS WLANs; the downlink throughput was increased by more than 10 times while the overall network throughput was increased by approximately 50%.

This paper considers a relayed broadcast in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area (WLAN) networks. In the relayed broadcast, a source node intends to deliver data frames to many nodes beyond its coverage and all the nodes except the source node attempt to relay the received data frames in a contention-based and distributed manner. This traffic dissemination scheme, referred to as flooding, has several problems. As the number of nodes increases, the contention for channel access becomes intensified, resulting in a severe problem of collision and interference, and at the same time, many duplicate frames are unnecessarily transmitted. In order to mitigate contention and redundancy in the relayed broadcast, this paper proposes a bimodal flooding scheme combining two approaches. The first approach aims to relieve contention by deferring the transmission of data frames based on the number of neighbor nodes. Meanwhile, to suppress redundant transmission of data frames, the second approach introduces a novel index of duplication ratio, with which data frames are discarded probabilistically. In this way, the former contributes to the reliable transmission of broadcasting traffic and the latter is effective to decrease its dissemination time. Via simulation study, the performance of several flooding schemes are compared and analyzed in diverse aspects.

In this paper, we consider a relayed-broadcasting mechanism in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs), to broadcast data traffic beyond the coverage of a source node. For this purpose, we adopt a probabilistic flooding scheme with which each intermediate node rebroadcasts received frames in a probabilistic manner to restrict unnecessary broadcasting of duplicate frames, as well as to decrease frequent collisions or interference due to simultaneous transmissions. In the relayed-broadcasting, there occurs a fundamental and inevitable tradeoff between reliable broadcasting and fast dissemination. To deal with this tradeoff, we consider two schemes of probabilistic flooding, named as relay-oriented flooding and reception-oriented flooding. The former is devised to improve the reliability of broadcasting, while the latter is devised to decrease the dissemination time. Via a simple analysis and extensive simulations, we compare the performance of these two schemes of probabilistic flooding in various aspects. The simulation results reveal interesting results and drawbacks of probabilistic flooding, which can be a basis for developing an effective relayed-broadcasting mechanism as our future work.

We propose a novel media access control (MAC) protocol, referred to as signaling-free max-min airtime fair (SMAF) MAC, to improve fairness and channel utilization in ad hoc networks based on IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). We introduce busy time ratio (BTR) as a measure for max-min airtime fairness. Each node estimates its BTR and adjusts the transmission duration by means of frame aggregation and fragmentation, so that it can implicitly announce the BTR to neighbor nodes. Based on the announced BTR, each of the neighbor nodes controls its contention window. In this way, the SMAF MAC works in a distributed manner without the need to know the max-min fair share of airtime, and it does not require exchanging explicit control messages among nodes to attain fairness. Moreover, we successfully incorporate the hidden node detection and resolution mechanisms into the SMAF MAC to deal with the hidden node problem in ad hoc networks. The simulation results confirm that the SMAF MAC enhances airtime fairness without degrading channel utilization, and it effectively resolves several serious problems in ad hoc networks such as the starvation, performance anomaly, and hidden node problems.