An adaptive grouping scheme in ultra-dense IEEE 802.11ax network using buffer state report based two-stage mechanism

Abstract

IEEE 802.11ax, which is an emerging WLAN standard, aims at providing highly efficient communication in ultra-dense wireless networks. However, due to a large number of stations (STAs) in the ultra-dense device deployment scenarios, the potentially high packet collision rate significantly decreases the communication efficiency of WLAN. In this paper, we propose an adaptive STA grouping scheme to overcome this dense network challenge in IEEE 802.11ax by using Buffer State Report (BSR) based Two-stage Mechanism (BTM). In order to achieve the optimal efficiency of BSR delivery, we analyze the functional relationship between STA number in group and Resource Unit (RU) efficiency. Based on this analysis results, an adaptive STA grouping algorithm with variable group size is proposed to achieve efficient grouping in BTM. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed adaptive BTM grouping algorithm significantly improves the BSR delivery efficiency and the throughput of overall system and each STA in the ultra-dense wireless network.