Hello, everyone!
Today, I would like to share a post on some of the open challenges of IEEE 802.11ac amendment in WLAN.
Since the IEEE 802.11ac amendment has been finalized, current research around it should cover two main aspects:
a) comprehending IEEE 802.11ac performance bounds, which necessitates the creation of new models, simulation tools, and experimental platforms for IEEE 802.11ac-based WLANs
b) proposing specific solutions for those aspects of the IEEE 802.11ac amendment that are not defined on purpose, such as the mechanism for forming groups of STAs for DL-MU-MIMO transmissions, smart packet schedulers capable of determining when DL-MU-MIMO transmissions outperform SU-MIMO transmissions, and the implementation of the TXOP sharing feature between multiple ACs.
The findings and conclusions gained in both cases will be extremely useful in the development of IEEE 802.11ac technologies, as well as in the conception of future amendments that will replace IEEE 802.11ac in four to five years, such as IEEE 802.11ax, which was just announced.
Following up on the first point, various efforts have been made to better understand the theoretical and experimental performance bounds of IEEE 802.11ac. When packet aggregation, channel bonding, and alternative spatial stream configurations are taken into account, the maximum downlink throughput that an IEEE 802.11ac AP can accomplish.
The IEEE 802.11ac performance was assessed experimentally with commodity equipment, with an emphasis on the effects of bigger channels, 256-QAM modulation, and the number of SU-MIMO spatial streams on throughput and energy consumption. It's worth noting that DL-MU-MIMO had not yet been implemented in the equipment they were using at the time, therefore that feature was overlooked.
The WARP platform is used to evaluate a DL-MU-MIMO implementation for WLANs, which includes a thorough examination of the possible benefits of DL-MU-MIMO transmissions in terms of receiver location, number of users, and user mobility, among other factors.
The findings of a system that includes both packet aggregation and DL-MU-MIMO transmission reveal that the buffer space must be properly dimensioned to realize the full potential of such a combination.
They show that the packet aggregation mechanism introduced in IEEE 802.11ac surpasses the one in IEEE 802.11n in the vast majority of circumstances. The performance of the IEEE 802.11ac TXOP sharing mechanism in DL-MU-MIMO communications is evaluated using an analytical model. The major goal is to figure out how the TXOP sharing mechanism can increase system efficiency while also ensuring that different ACs have equal access to channels.
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