Scheduling Strategies and Throughput Optimization for the Downlink for IEEE 802.11ax and IEEE 802.11ac Based Networks

Abstract

The new IEEE 802.11ax standard is aimed to serve many users while enabling every station to transmit a consistent stream of data without interruption. In this paper we evaluate the upper bound on the throughput of a Downlink IEEE 802.11ax channel using the Single User (SU) mode and using the Multi User Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) mode. We compare between IEEE 802.11ax and IEEE 802.11ac for the case of 1, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 stations in different Modulation/Coding schemes (MCS) and different transmission windows’ sizes, 64 and 256 frames in IEEE 802.11ax. IEEE 802.11ax outperforms IEEE 802.11ac in the SU and MU modes by 52% and 74% in a reliable channel respectively, while in an unreliable channel the improvements are by 59% and 103% respectively. Also, in terms of the access delay, the advantage of IEEE 802.11ax increases as the number of stations increases.