Performance Enhancement of IEEE 802.11AX in Ultra-Dense Wireless Networks

IEEE 802.11ax, which is one emerging WLAN standard, aims at providing highly efficient communication in ultra-dense wireless networks. However, due to a large number of stations (STAs) in dense deployment scenarios and diverse services to be supported, there are many technical challenges to be overcome. Firstly, the potential high packet collision rate significantly degrades the network efficiency of WLAN. In this thesis, we propose an adaptive station (STA) grouping scheme to overcome this challenge in IEEE 802.11ax using Uplink OFDMA Random Access (UORA). In order to achieve optimal utilization efficiency of resource units (RUs), we first analyze the relationship between group size and RU efficiency. Based on this result, an adaptive STA grouping algorithm is proposed to cope with the performance fluctuation of 802.11ax due to remainder stations after grouping. The analysis and simulation results demonstrate that our adaptive grouping algorithm dramatically improves the performance of both the overall system and each STA in the ultra-dense wireless network. Meanwhile, due to the limited RU efficiency of UORA, we adopt the proposed grouping scheme in the Buffer State Report (BSR) based two-stage mechanism (BTM) to enhance the Uplink (UL) Multi-user (MU) access in 802.11ax. Then we propose an adaptive BTM grouping scheme. The analysis results of average RU for each STA, average throughput of the whole system and each STA are derived. The numerical results show that the proposed adaptive grouping scheme provides 2.55, 413.02 and 3712.04 times gains in throughput compared with the UORA grouping, conventional BTM, and conventional UORA, respectively. Furthermore, in order to provide better QoS experience in the ultra-dense network with diverse IoT services, we propose a Hybrid BTM Grouping algorithm to guarantee the QoS requirement from high priority STAs. The concept of ``QoS Utility is introduced to evaluate the satisfaction of transmission. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed Hybrid BTM grouping scheme has better performance in BSR delivery rate as well as QoS utility than the conventional BTM grouping

Wireless broadband access: WiMAX and beyond - Investigation of bandwidth request mechanisms under point-to-multipoint mode of WiMAX networks

The WiMAX standard specifies a metropolitan area broadband wireless access air interface. In order to support QoS for multimedia applications, various bandwidth request and scheduling mechanisms are suggested in WiMAX, in which a subscriber station can send request messages to a base station, and the base station can grant or reject the request according to the available radio resources. This article first compares two fundamental bandwidth request mechanisms specified in the standard, random access vs. polling under the point-to-multipoint mode, a mandatory transmission mode. Our results demonstrate that random access outperforms polling when the request rate is low. However, its performance degrades significantly when the channel is congested. Adaptive switching between random access and polling according to load can improve system performance. We also investigate the impact of channel noise on the random access request mechanism

Exploring Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance Techniques for Resource Sharing in Broadband Power Line Communications

A resource sharing in power line communications (PLC) for the home network is restricted by the channel assignment techniques which decide who has the right to gain access to send data. The channel assignment techniques include contention-free and contention-based. The former requires high synchronization due to the deterministic round-trip time. Besides, contention-based utilizes CSMA/CA techniques that allow stations in a network to compete for channel access and are suitable for decentralized network topology. However, a trade-off exists between the number of stations required to gain access versus system efficiency. Whilst some research has been carried out on CSMA/CA resource sharing techniques that allow only one user to transmit, there is very little work done on multiuser access to optimize system efficiency and reduce collisions in a network. The purpose of the current study was to review the CSMA/CA techniques for resource sharing to improve system efficiency in power line communications. In carrying out this study, a systematic literature review methodology to evaluate different related works and determine the most suitable approach to allow multiuser channel access was used. The study further demonstrated the impact multichannel access has on system efficiency. In addition, the study provides recommendations for future research. Keywords: CSMA/CA; Medium access control; OFDMA; power line; resource sharing