Abstract
While celebrating the 21st year since the very first IEEE 802.11 “legacy” 2 Mbit/s wireless local area network standard, the latest Wi-Fi newborn is today reaching the finish line, topping the remarkable speed of 10 Gbit/s. IEEE 802.11ax was launched in May 2014 with the goal of enhancing throughput-per-area in high-density scenarios. The first 802.11ax draft versions, namely, D1.0 and D2.0, were released at the end of 2016 and 2017. Focusing on a more mature version D3.0, in this tutorial paper, we help the reader to smoothly enter into the several major 802.11ax breakthroughs, including a brand new orthogonal frequency-division multiple access-based random access approach as well as novel spatial frequency reuse techniques. In addition, this tutorial will highlight selected significant improvements (including physical layer enhancements, multi-user multiple input multiple output extensions, power saving advances, and so on) which make this standard a very significant step forward with respect to its predecessor 802.11ac.
Highlights
W HEN, in September 1990, the very first meeting of the 802.11 project was held, hardly anyone could imagine the extent to which that early initiative, devised to - verbatim quoting the original 802.11 Project Authorization Request — “develop a Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specification for wireless connectivity for fixed, portable and moving stations within a local area”, would have changed our connectivity habits.in these last 28 years, Wi-Fi — specified by the family of the IEEE 802.11 standards — has widely spread across virtually any user’s device, as well as any inhabited deployment — homes, offices, cafes, parks, airports, etc
In 802.11ax, the channel resources are allocated over time and frequency, but in order to simplify resource management and device operation, and to retain compatibility with legacy devices, the Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) transmission is organized on a per-frame basis
In the case of the DL OFDMA transmission, the HE-special interest groups (SIGs)-B field of the common preamble contains an resource unit (RU) allocation map which is followed by per-user content fields indicating the RUs assigned to an STA and the transmission parameters to be used by the STA (NSTS, Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS), coding, etc)
Summary
W HEN, in September 1990, the very first meeting of the 802.11 project was held, hardly anyone could imagine the extent to which that early initiative, devised to - verbatim quoting the original 802.11 Project Authorization Request — “develop a Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specification for wireless connectivity for fixed, portable and moving stations within a local area”, would have changed our connectivity habits In these last 28 years, Wi-Fi — specified by the family of the IEEE 802.11 standards — has widely spread across virtually any user’s device, as well as any inhabited deployment — homes, offices, cafes, parks, airports, etc.
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