Interference-Aware Two-Level Differentiated Transmission for Improving Downlink Spatial Reuse in Dense WLANs

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 interference-aware two-level differentiation mechanism consisting of the dual channel access (DCA) and supplemental power control (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: spatial reusable STAs (SR-STAs) and non-spatial reusable STAs (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.