future internet

Article
A Survey of Wi-Fi 6: Technologies, Advances, and Challenges
Erfan Mozaffariahrar 1, *, Fabrice Theoleyre 2 and Michael Menth 1

1 Chair of Communication Networks, University of Tuebingen, 72074 Tuebingen, Germany

2 ICube Laboratory, CNRS/University of Strasbourg, Pole API, 67081 Strasbourg, France
* Correspondence: [email protected]

Abstract: Wi-Fi is a popular wireless technology and is continuously extended to keep pace with
requirements such as high throughput, real-time communication, dense networks, or resource and
energy efficiency. The IEEE 802.11ax standard, also known as Wi-Fi 6, promises to provide data rates
of up to almost 10 Gb/s, lower energy consumption, and higher reliability. Its capabilities go far
beyond Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and novel technical concepts have been introduced for this purpose. As
such, the Wi-Fi 6 standard includes Multi-User Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (MU
OFDMA), Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU MIMO), new mechanisms for Spatial
Reuse (SR), new mechanisms for power saving, higher-order modulation, and additional minor
improvements. In this paper, we provide a survey of Wi-Fi 6. Initially, we provide a compact
technological summary of Wi-Fi 5 and its predecessors. Then, we discuss the potential application
domains of Wi-Fi 6, which are enabled through its novel features. Subsequently, we explain these
features and review the related works in these areas. Finally, performance evaluation tools for Wi-Fi 6
and future roadmaps are discussed.

Keywords: IEEE 802.11ax; Wi-Fi 6; spatial reuse; OFDMA; MU-MIMO; target wake time (TWT);
1024-QAM

Citation: Mozaffariahrar, E.;

Theoleyre, F.; Menth, M. A Survey of
Wi-Fi 6: Technologies, Advances, and 1. Introduction
Challenges. Future Internet 2022, 14,
Wireless traffic will significantly grow in the next few years. Cisco expects 71% mobile
293. https://doi.org/10.3390/
connectivity by 2023 [1]. The prime use cases of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are
fi14100293
industrial automation with the motion flexibility of actuators, sensors, controllers, mobile
Academic Editor: Ammar Muthanna users, dense networks including a large number of users, healthcare for patient monitoring
and Mohammed Abo-Zahhad and diagnosis, etc. [2]. Dense networks have a high density of users and access points,
Received: 1 September 2022
generating a large volume of interference [3]. They require efficient spatial frequency reuse.
Accepted: 4 October 2022
The IEEE 802.11 standard fulfills these demands (in the literature, IEEE 802.11 and
Published: 14 October 2022 Wi-Fi are used interchangeably and we follow this convention). Wi-Fi is an unlicensed
technology that focuses on the Physical (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers. It
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
is suitable for mobile and high-speed Internet access and is mainly deployed for enterprise
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
and home networks. The number of public Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to reach 628 million
published maps and institutional affil-
in 2023 [1] as many infrastructures rely on Wi-Fi technology. The IEEE 802.11 standard
iations.
introduced in 1997 was followed by major amendments (see Table 1): 802.11b, 802.11a,
802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax, and 802.11be. They are considered generations and
are also denoted as Wi-Fi 1 to Wi-Fi 7. The prevalent Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), meets
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. neither the real-time and high-reliability demands of high-quality multimedia applications
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. nor the energy efficiency of Internet of Things (IoT) networks. It cannot simultaneously
This article is an open access article support a large number of users with high Quality of Service (QoS) and suffers from
distributed under the terms and inefficient power management.
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).

Future Internet 2022, 14, 293. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi14100293 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet

Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 2 of 52

Table 1. Wi-Fi amendments relevant to Wi-Fi 6.

Amendment Year Released Target

IEEE 802.11b 1999 Wi-Fi 1
IEEE 802.11a 1999 Wi-Fi 2
IEEE 802.11g 2003 Wi-Fi 3
IEEE 802.11e 2005 QoS enhancements
IEEE 802.11n 2009 Wi-Fi 4
IEEE 802.11ac 2013 Wi-Fi 5
IEEE 802.11ah 2017 Low-power WLAN
Extended range
IEEE 802.11ax 2021 Wi-Fi 6

The IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) task group started to investigate and design the next
generation of WLAN appropriate for dense networks and real-time communications in
2014. The Wi-Fi 6 standard [4] was officially published in May 2021. The task group
focused on providing a four times higher throughput per station while keeping the same
power consumption as IEEE 802.11ac or improving it. Since this standard focuses on better
spectrum efficiency, it is known as the high-efficiency standard. IEEE 802.11ax modifies
both thePHY and MAC layers and introduces multiple features to enhance Wi-Fi users’
satisfaction. It achieves current expectations thanks to wider channels, MU OFDMA for
channel access, uplink (UL) MU MIMO to improve capacity, SR for spectral efficiency,
Target Wake Time (TWT) to manage power consumption, 1024 Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation (QAM) to increase throughput, and other additional improvements [5]. Wi-Fi 6
operates on the 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz frequency bands. Together, these features lead to high
data rates of up to 9.6 Gb/s.
The successor to the standard of Wi-Fi 6, IEEE 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7), is currently under
study and targets ultra-high-throughput networks. However, it is only in its early stages
and is not expected to be introduced before 2024. This survey serves as a basis for future
improvements to Wi-Fi 7, making it a helpful research tool.

1.1. Contribution
In this paper, we consider publications about Wi-Fi 6 since 2015. To the best of our
knowledge, the current paper is the first comprehensive literature review of IEEE 802.11ax
based on the latest version of the standard.
There are already several tutorials describing novel features of Wi-Fi 6, which are listed in
Table 2. Several papers present Wi-Fi 6 based on the early stages of the standardization [6–8]
and are no longer up to date. Other tutorials focus on specific features such as resource
allocation [9] or the MAC layer [10]. The most complete tutorial on Wi-Fi 6 is the one by
Khorov et al. [11] with a focus on spatial reuse and random Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiple Access (OFDMA). In Sections 2 and 3, we provide a detailed description of Wi-
Fi 6 for the benefit of non-expert readers, which may be skipped by expert readers familiar
with Wi-Fi 6.
In this article, we present a detailed survey of the studies of Wi-Fi 6. We identified the
following surveys that have been published in this field (Table 3):
• Wilhelmi [12] summarized the related works for spatial reuse in Wi-Fi 6;
• Nurchis [13] focused on energy efficiency for low-power devices;
• Masri [14] focused on scheduling and resource allocation;
• Qu [15] presented a novel simulator for next-generation wireless networks and identi-
fied a few contributions to the field.
According to Tables 2 and 3, each of these tutorials and surveys has only a few
references in common with our paper. Therefore, our paper covers a large number of
references that were not considered by other tutorial and review papers. Moreover, none
of these surveys focus on modulation techniques and MU MIMO. Although OFDMA is
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 3 of 52

investigated in [14], our survey is more comprehensive with more than 70 references in this
field. In addition, we explore other topics in more detail than the other surveys.

Table 2. Tutorials on Wi-Fi 6. The current paper is based on the official standard (May 2021), whereas
earlier papers rely on, e.g., Draft 3.0 (2018) or Draft 4.0 (2019).

#Common References
Paper Date References Focus
with Current Paper
Bellalta [6] 2016 15 All features 0
Afaqui [7] 2016 12 All features 4
Yang [8] 2017 9 All features 0
Ali [9] 2018 117 Resource allocation 4
All features mainly:
Khorov [11] 2018 79 random OFDMA and 18
spatial reuse
Yang [10] 2020 17 MAC layer 3

Table 3. Surveys on Wi-Fi 6.

#Common References
Paper Date References Focus
with Current Paper
Nurchis [13] 2019 15 TWT 5
Wilhelmi [12] 2020 56 Spatial reuse 18
Scheduling and
Masri [14] 2019 20 15
resource allocation
Qu [15] 2019 18 Simulator 3
Current paper 2022 221 All features –

The ambition of the current paper is a comprehensive survey of all the features of Wi-
Fi 6. Its target and level of explanation focus on the networking aspect of the enhancements
rather than on the signal processing field so it is of most interest to researchers in networking.
In each section, it focuses on a specific feature of Wi-Fi 6 to survey the corresponding related
works. Figure 1 visualizes the categorizations of the related works by feature and facilitates
a fast lookup of the relevant references.

Random Access
[37] ... [50]

Centalized Approach
[51] ... [68]
User Distribution
Real-time/QoS Scheduling [151] ... [155]
[69] ... [73]
TWT Clock Drifts
Optimization OFDMA Section VI [156]
[74] ... [89] Section IV
Traffic Aware Scheduling
Cross-layer Scheduling [157] ... [160]
[90], [91]

Synchronization User Selection

[92], [93] [67], [161] ... [163]

Performance Evaluation MU-MIMO Channel Estimation

Wi-Fi 6
[94] ... [109] Section VII [164] ... [170]

Performance Evaluation
[15], [102], [171] ... [173]
Threshold Manipulation
[114] ... [138]

MAC Modification MCS Selection

[139] ... [141] [178] ... [183]
Spatial Reuse Modulation
Rate Control Section V Section VIII Performance Evaluation
[142], [143] [21], [106], [171] ... [188]

Performance Evaluation
[21], [144] ... [150]

Figure 1. The related works are categorized according to the features of Wi-Fi 6.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 4 of 52

The main contributions of this paper are the following:

• It explains the main features of Wi-Fi 6 based on the latest released standard. Thereby,
it describes the improvements and differences compared to earlier Wi-Fi standards.
• It provides a comprehensive review of the related works exploiting the new features.
• It categorizes the related works regarding their objectives, which makes it easier for
researchers to learn about the recent advances in Wi-Fi 6.
• An overview of current evaluation tools and available hardware is compiled.

1.2. Paper Structure

The paper is organized as follows and the structure of the paper is depicted in Figure 2.
Section 2 gives a compact introduction to thePHY and MAC layers of Wi-Fi generations
1–5 and reviews the history of the Wi-Fi standard. This section is intended to provide Wi-Fi
basics for novice readers, whereas expert readers may skip it. Section 3 overviews the
novel features of Wi-Fi 6, introduces its novel frequency band, and discusses targeted use
cases. Sections 4–8 provide a brief and concise background of OFDMA, SR, TWT, MIMO,
and advanced modulation in Wi-Fi 6. They also provide an overview of the deficiencies
in previous standards and give a tutorial introduction to the technology, followed by the
corresponding related works. The performance evaluation tools utilized for the Wi-Fi 6
studies are discussed in Section 9. Section 10 investigates the open issues in 802.11ax and
provides a perspective on future Wi-Fi standards. Finally, Section 11 concludes the paper.
A list of acronyms is provided in Abbreviations to facilitate reading.

Introduction (Sec. I)

Part I: Overview of Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi Basics (Sec. II)

Wi-Fi 6 Overview (Sec. III)

Part II: Wi-Fi 6 Research Domain

OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 (Sec. IV)

Spatial Reuse in Wi-Fi 6 (Sec. V)

TWT in Wi-Fi 6 (Sec. VI)

MU-MIMO (Sec. VII)

Modulation Techniques (Sec. VIII)

Tools for Performance Evaluation (Sec. IX)

Open Challenges with Wi-Fi 6 (Sec. X)

Conclusion (Sec. XI)

List of Abbreviations (Appendix A)

Figure 2. Structure of the paper.

2. Wi-Fi Basics
This section provides a brief introduction to Wi-Fi and can be skipped by expert
readers. We provide an overview of thePHY and MAC layers in Wi-Fi up to Wi-Fi 5. It is
the baseline for the improvements to Wi-Fi 6 that are explained in the subsequent sections.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 5 of 52

2.1. PHY in Wi-Fi

Recent Wi-Fi standards utilize OFDM modulation, MIMO technology, and modulation
techniques for increasing data rates. We introduce these techniques in the following subsections.

2.1.1. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

OFDM is a multicarrier modulation scheme for data transmission in a channel. This
means that the channel is subdivided into multiple subcarriers or tones, and data are
transmitted in parallel over the subcarriers. The distance between the subcarrier frequencies
may be low, e.g., 312.5 kHz in Wi-Fi 5. To minimize interference among the subcarriers, the
frequencies must be chosen carefully to be orthogonal to each other. Then, each subcarrier
is modulated independently.
OFDM typically spreads the information of a high-bitrate stream over 2n subcarriers.
To that end, m-bit groups are assigned to each subcarrier and converted to a constellation
point using QAM. The entirety of all constellation points forms an OFDM symbol. Conver-
sion to electromagnetic waves turns this OFDM symbol into an OFDM signal. An OFDM
signal transmits one or multiple concatenated OFDM symbols.
To avoid interference in time, a Guard Interval (GI) is added after every symbol. It
is a short time interval between two consecutive symbols that protects against imperfect
synchronization as successive transmissions must never overlap, particularly in the case of
clock drifts or multipath delay spread. Symbol duration and GI are visualized in Figure 3a.
In Wi-Fi 5, the symbol duration is 3.2 µs long and the GI takes 0.4 µs or 0.8 µs.
OFDM in Wi-Fi 2–5 is used for data transmission. A high-bitrate data stream is divided
into multiple lower-bitrate data streams. Thus, each subcarrier has a N1 data rate of the
total data rate. As data is transmitted in parallel at a N1 data rate, the symbol time increases
by N compared to the single-tone transmission. Therefore, the OFDM symbol duration
has a reverse relationship with the subcarrier spacing. Figure 3 illustrates the relationship
between subcarrier spacing and symbol duration in OFDM: smaller subcarrier spacing
requires a longer symbol duration.

1
------ 3.2 us 0.4/0.8 us
312.5 KHz
Payload GI

OFDM symbol Time

Subcarrier spacing: Frequency

312.5 KHz

(a) Wi-Fi 5

1
------ 12.8 us 0.8/1.6/3.2 us
78.125 KHz
Payload GI

OFDM symbol Time

Subcarrier spacing: Frequency

78.125 KHz

(b) Wi-Fi 6

Figure 3. Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 comparison in terms of subcarrier spacing and OFDM symbol duration.
Payload symbol duration is reciprocal to subcarrier spacing.

2.1.2. Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems

MIMO was introduced in 802.11n to overcome the multipath effects that arose with the
standards 802.11a/b/g in complex radio environments (because of, e.g., corridors, walls).
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 6 of 52

With MIMO, the signal is transmitted and received simultaneously through multiple
antennas, increasing the number of data streams that can be transmitted in parallel.
MIMO offers three different methods for data transmission within a channel:
Spatial Multiplexing: Each antenna can transmit independent data signals to the
receiver. These data signals are called spatial streams [16]. MIMO increases the
throughput linearly with the number of antennas. Figure 4a shows this transmis-
sion method.
Spatial Diversity: This method turns the multipath effect into an advantage by trans-
mitting the same data over multiple antennas. Since every antenna on the receiver
side might receive data copies from other streams too, it provides redundancy. A
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) module recombines the received spatial streams to
recover the whole data chunk (see Figure 4a).
Beamforming: This technique modifies dynamically the radiation pattern of the group
of antennas. It is similar to directing the signal in a specific direction to strengthen
the signal rather than spreading the energy in all directions. Narrower beams bring
stronger signals and reduced interference (see Figure 4b).
In 802.11n, an access point with multiple antennas communicates with only a single
station at a time. It may transmit multiple data streams in parallel to the same station
but multiple stations must be served sequentially. This feature is also called Single-User
Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (SU MIMO).
IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) introduces downlink MU MIMO to serve multiple stations
in parallel. Wi-Fi 5 devices support up to eight spatial streams in parallel for downlink
transmission. That is, the access point can transmit data to up to four different stations
(with two spatial streams per station). MU MIMO leverages a transmit beamforming (TxBF)
technique to concentrate the signal in four different directions, i.e., one direction per station.

1 STA 1
1 D
S
2 P

2
STA .
.
.
3
D AP
.
AP S
. STA 2
P
.

(a) Multiplexing and spatial diversity (b) Beamforming

Figure 4. (MU-)MIMO modes.

2.1.3. Modulation
Modulation techniques maximize the number of bits transmitted per subcarrier. Wi-
Fi 5 supports up to 256 QAM that modulates 8 bits of information per subcarrier. QAM
modulates data in each subcarrier. More bits per OFDM symbol lead to a larger through-
put under the condition that the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) is sufficient. Higher-order
modulations are expected to be efficient only under favorable conditions, namely clear
environments and short distances.
The coding rate identifies the portion of bits that is used for the transmission of data
and Forward Error Correction (FEC). The supported coding rates are 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, and
5/6. A coding rate of 5/6 means that 83.3% (i.e., 5/6) of the data stream is used to carry
data and 16.7% is used to carry FEC.
The combination of modulations namely, Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), Quadra-
ture Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM with coding rates, allow
the standard to choose the data rate dynamically according to the radio environment [5].
The Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) [17] index comprises a given set of parame-
ters to provide a wide variety of data rates for wireless connections. It is part of the rate
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 7 of 52

adaptation feature in wireless technology and includes the guard interval, coding rate,
modulation, channel width, and the number of spatial streams. A discrete list of MCS
means that some combinations are impossible (cf. Table 4). For instance, BPSK with a
coding rate of 3/4 is not possible.

Table 4. MCS maximum data rates in a 160 MHz channel for one spatial stream. Payload symbol
duration and guard interval are 12.8 µs and 0.8 µs, respectively.

MCS Index Modulation Coding Data Rate (Mb/s)

0 BPSK 1/2 72
1 QPSK 1/2 144
2 QPSK 3/4 216
3 16-QAM 1/2 282
4 16-QAM 3/4 432
5 64-QAM 2/3 576
6 64-QAM 3/4 649
7 64-QAM 5/6 721
8 256-QAM 3/4 865
9 256-QAM 5/6 961
10 1024-QAM 3/4 1081
11 1024-QAM 5/6 1201

2.2. MAC in Wi-Fi

We detail here the basic MAC layer features of Wi-Fi.

2.2.1. Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)

Wi-Fi nodes utilize Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA)
to share the wireless medium. Before any transmission, a node has to verify that the medium
is free for the duration of a DIFS. Then, it engages a backoff phase: the transmitter picks a
random value that represents the number of slots that a transmitter has to wait for before
transmitting its packet. After each idle slot, the backoff is decremented. Conversely, Wi-Fi
implements a residual backoff: the backoff is paused if the medium is busy to maximize
short-term fairness. The transmitter has to wait until the medium is free for the period of a
DIFS before resuming the countdown. The transmission starts when the backoff is null.
The receiver may acknowledge the correct reception of a unicast packet. More precisely,
the ACK is transmitted after waiting for a Short InterFrame Space (SIFS) duration after
the reception of the data frame. The transmitter considers a transmission failure if an
ACK is not received. It retransmits the frame with the exponential backoff algorithm to
progressively reduce the collision probability. This means that a random backoff time
is chosen from within an initial contention window, doubling after every unsuccessful
transmission attempt.
In Wi-Fi, the hidden node problem may occur, which may severely impact network
performance [18]. Consider the topology illustrated in Figure 5. Nodes A and B are within
each other’s transmission and interference range; the same holds for nodes B and C but
nodes A and C cannot hear each other. As a result, node C may start a transmission,
although transmission from nodes A to B is ongoing so B’s reception is impaired.

A B C

Figure 5. Hidden node problem.

Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 8 of 52

The Request-To-Send (RTS)/Clear-To-Send (CTS) mechanism has been introduced to

cope with the hidden node problem. Before the transmission of a large frame, the sender
sends a small RTS packet to the receiver to reserve the medium and the receiver responds
with a CTS packet after the duration of a SIFS. The RTS/CTS mechanism ensures that all
nodes within the transmission range are informed about an upcoming transmission and
defer potential transmission attempts. This prevents C from jamming A’s transmission to
B in Figure 5. The duration for RTS/CTS is much shorter than the one for data and ACK
together, which drastically reduces the likelihood of collisions.
Each node maintains a Network Allocation Vector (NAV), which represents a record of
ongoing transmissions. Since the RTS (resp. CTS) frame contains the duration of the whole
frame exchange after the reception of the RTS (resp. CTS), any neighbor of the transmitter
and the receiver can update its NAV (Figure 6). In particular, a node cannot transmit any
frames if its NAV value is not null. The receiver blocks all its radio neighbors with a CTS
until the end of the whole frame exchange.

D S
I I
Busy F F
AP ... RTS DATA
S S
Random S S
backoff I I
F F
CTS ACK
STA S S
D
I
F
Other NAV (RTS)
S

NAV (CTS) Random

backoff
(7 slots)
Defer Access
(NAV + DIFS)

Figure 6. Channel access using the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) in Wi-Fi.

2.2.2. Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA)

Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) provides QoS for wireless networks
by enhancing DCF in legacy Wi-Fi. It introduces prioritized traffic classes, so-called access
categories (ACs), and gives prioritized access to higher-priority packets. The nodes label
the data packets in the upper layers. EDCA defines four different ACs: video, voice, best
effort, and background traffic. AC-specific inter-frame spaces, called Arbitrary InterFrame
Space (AIFS), help to handle packets differently. A high-priority station waits for a shorter
AIFS time before decrementing its backoff value. Moreover, EDCA enforces AC-specific
min/max values for contention windows. EDCA achieves proportional QoS: higher-
priority flows obtain more bandwidth than lower-priority flows. Moreover, EDCA assigns
larger Transmission Opportunity (TXOP) values for high-priority flows. In this way, the
corresponding stations can send several packets back-to-back to increase their throughput
compared to the low-priority stations.

2.2.3. Power Management in Legacy Wi-Fi

The use of wireless devices in smart homes, industry, healthcare, etc., has considerably
increased in recent years and many wireless devices use a battery as a power supply [1].
Therefore, power efficiency is a critical issue in Wi-Fi. To save energy, legacy Wi-Fi in-
troduced the Power-Saving Mode (PSM) [17]. PSM-enabled stations alternate between
active and doze modes. Stations in active mode are ready for transmission or reception.
Stations in doze mode save energy by turning off their radio chipsets and are thus unable
to transmit or receive packets.
PSM-enabled stations inform the access point that they have started power-saving
mode. The access point then starts buffering the packets destined for this sleeping station.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 9 of 52

The access point piggybacks the list of pending destinations (Traffic Indication Map (TIM))
in its beacons. Thus, stations wake up regularly to receive beacons to check whether the
access point has buffered packets for them. Since the beacon interval is indicated in the
beacons, a station knows when the next beacons will be transmitted and wakes up slightly
before their transmission to cope with clock drifts. More precisely, a station must wake up
to receive at least one beacon at every Delivery Traffic Indication Map (DTIM) interval.
When a station decodes the beacon, the station knows if some packets are pending. In
the absence of pending packets, the station may switch immediately to doze mode again.
Otherwise, it stays active and notifies the access point that it is ready to receive packets. If
the station has packets to send, it stays active and uses DCF for transmission.

3. Wi-Fi 6 Overview
The Wi-Fi 6 standard [5] proposes modifications to IEEE 802.11. Its prime goals
are improving throughput by at least four times per station compared to IEEE 802.11ac
while improving power efficiency and supporting dense networks. Wi-Fi 6 adds new
features to thePHY and MAC layers. It also includes some modifications for backward
compatibility with legacy devices operating based on IEEE 802.11n in the 2.4 GHz band
and IEEE 802.11n/ac in the 5 GHz band [19].
In this section, we elaborate on the latest standard by outlining each feature individu-
ally. Next, we introduce Wi-Fi 6E in detail in Section 3.2. Finally, we explain some use cases
for Wi-Fi 6.

3.1. Novel Features

Here, we provide an overview of the main novelties introduced by Wi-Fi 6. The
improvements they have achieved are listed in Table 5.

Table 5. Innovations in Wi-Fi 6.

Features Benefits

Higher throughput
MU OFDMA
Overhead reduction
High spectral efficiency
Longer OFDM symbol Higher efficiency for indoors
Robustness for outdoors
Spectral efficiency
Spatial reuse
Increased capacity
Higher throughput
Reliability
TWT Lower latency
Power saving
Reduced jitter
MU MIMO Up to 8× capacity increase in uplink
Up to 2× capacity increase in downlink
1024-QAM 25% higher data rate

Access Points (APs) and Stations (STAs) operating based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard
have ““High Efficiency (HE)” as a prefix. To avoid repetition and for simplicity, we use the
station and access point as substitutes for the HE station and HE access point. Moreover,
we use Wi-Fi 6 as the representative of HE IEEE 802.11ax in the remainder of this paper,
and legacy Wi-Fi is considered IEEE 802.11ac.

3.1.1. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)

With OFDM, transmissions are spread over several subcarriers, thus requiring the
entire spectrum. In dense networks, many stations compete for medium access and increase
the collision probability, which reduces the throughput. To overcome this issue, Wi-Fi 6
utilizes OFDMA. With OFDMA, a transmission requires only parts of the spectrum so
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 10 of 52

multiple transmissions can happen in parallel. This considerably reduces contention and
overheads on the MAC layer. Thereby, it reduces latency and improves throughput in
dense networks.
Although OFDMA has already been used by Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks for
downlink multi-user transmission, Wi-Fi 6 supports uplink and downlink transmissions in
multi-user mode. However, Wi-Fi 6 hardware also supports OFDM to maintain backward
compatibility with the 802.11a/g/n/ac standards. Details of OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 are
explained in Section 4.

3.1.2. Spatial Reuse (SR)

Wi-Fi technology has only a few different frequency channels that may be utilized
by neighboring Basic Service Sets (BSSs). When multiple access points are close to each
other, the BSSs are overlapping. As a consequence, a transmitting node blocks other
transmissions in its BSS and in other BSSs with the same channel, which makes frequency
reuse difficult [20].
Wi-Fi 6 utilizes the concept of BSS coloring from IEEE 802.11ah to indicate the BSS in
the packet header. A node takes advantage of this information to overhear transmissions of
packets from other BSSs. As a result, a node may start a transmission if it estimates that
it will not create a collision with ongoing transmissions that are part of another BSS. This
improves SR in Wi-Fi 6 [21]. Section 5 explains the details of this feature.

3.1.3. TWT
To maximize the battery lifespan of Wi-Fi stations, the IEEE 802.11 standard defines
a PSM [17] (Section 2.2.3). However, stations with traffic to send/receive will compete
just after the reception of a beacon, resulting in traffic peaks and collisions. In addition, a
station stays awake until all its packets are received and/or transmitted, causing relatively
long active times for PSM devices even if they have only a little data to send or receive [22].
To mitigate these problems, Wi-Fi 6 leverages and extends TWT, which was intro-
duced originally in IEEE 802.11ah [23]. The wake times of stations under TWT control are
scheduled in advance without overlap. As a result, the standard maximizes the sleep times
of the stations and reduces their power consumption noticeably. We discuss TWT in detail
in Section 6.

3.1.4. MU MIMO
Wi-Fi 6 proposes both downlink and uplink MU MIMO. Moreover, eight parallel
streams are supported. In contrast to Wi-Fi 5, MU MIMO can be applied to only parts of
the spectrum in Wi-Fi 6 so that it can be combined with OFDMA. The details are discussed
in Section 7.

3.1.5. Modulation Techniques

Wi-Fi 6 defines the 1024-QAM modulation that supports the transmission of ten bits
at a time, increasing the data rate by 25% compared to Wi-Fi 5. This modulation scheme is
more sensitive to noise so it can be applied only if the channel quality is sufficiently good.
Combinations of Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCSs) are defined by an index. Due to
the novel modulation in Wi-Fi 6, two novel MCS indices are defined.
Furthermore, Wi-Fi 6 benefits from an optional modulation named Dual Carrier
Modulation (DCM) to combat interference for long-distance transmission [5,24]. The
modulation improvements are explained in Section 8.

3.2. Additional Frequency Band (Wi-Fi 6E)

The Wi-Fi 6 standard utilizes the 6 GHz frequency band in the range of 5.925–7.125 GHz
for unlicensed use with seven 160 MHz channels. They are suitable for video streaming and
virtual/augmented reality [25,26]. This new capability is referred to as Wi-Fi 6E (Expanded).
It brings wider channels and thereby lower latency and higher throughput than Wi-Fi 6 in
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 11 of 52

other bands. As this band is less occupied by other standards, there is mostly less noise than
in other bands, which leads to better performance. There are no backward compatibility
issues of Wi-Fi 6E with previous Wi-Fi standards as they do not use this frequency band.

3.3. Targeted Use Cases

The objective of Wi-Fi 6 is to satisfy the requirements of mobile users especially
in dense environments, for IoT networks, and for high-bitrate, low-latency multimedia
applications. This section describes these use cases and how Wi-Fi 6 resolves challenges.

3.3.1. Dense Environments

In dense environments, multiple access points with overlapping BSSs cohabit within a
small area. Wi-Fi 6 supports dense indoor or outdoor environments that require massive
access, e.g., apartments, stadiums, university campuses, airports, industrial plants, etc.
Such settings profit from SR as this improves parallel transmissions in neighboring
BSSs on the same channel. OFDMA reduces collisions that occur due to a large number of
users. Finally, MU MIMO increases the overall capacity needed for massive access.

3.3.2. Internet of Things (IoT)

The world’s Internet traffic is estimated to have manifold growth in the next few years,
mainly resulting from Machine-Type Communications (MTC). Each user is expected to have
on average 3.6 devices connected to the Internet [1]. IoT devices are widely applied to home
automation, industrial automation, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, etc. They are battery-
driven and need power-saving features, which are well supported by TWT. Moreover,
OFDMA helps to optimize medium access for a massive number of small packets.

3.3.3. Multimedia
In the last decade, multimedia applications with high-throughput and low-latency
requirements have become common in mobile devices. Examples are 4K/8K video and
audio streaming, online gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. This traffic surge
goes beyond the capacity of legacy Wi-Fi access points [27]. Wi-Fi 6 increases the capacity
of access points by higher-order modulation, OFDMA, and MU MIMO, which leads to a
better user experience [28].

4. OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6
In this section, we present the advances of Wi-Fi 6 concerning OFDMA and its impli-
cations for the MAC layer. Finally, we discuss the research works in this field.

4.1. Advances on the PHY Layer

We first explain how Resource Units (RUs) are used in Wi-Fi 6 to make spectrum usage
more flexible, and how a longer symbol duration in Wi-Fi 6 improves efficiency. Finally, we
discuss the new frame format.

4.1.1. Flexible Spectrum Usage

A major drawback of OFDM in Wi-Fi is the fact that only a single user can leverage a
channel. For every transmission in OFDM, there is a channel access contention overhead,
which is significant for small packets.
To overcome this limitation, Wi-Fi 6 introduces Resource Units (RUs). Essentially,
the bandwidth of a channel is partitioned in frequency and time, yielding time-frequency
blocks. The access points assign these blocks to users for their uplink transmissions. The
spectrum of such a time-frequency block is an RU and its duration is called a TXOP. A
TXOP is big enough to send one or multiple packets and to receive their acknowledgement.
To avoid interference, RUs used by different transmitters must not overlap (i.e., they must
use disjoint resources).
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 12 of 52

The assignment of RUs and TXOPs leads to a time-frequency matrix that enables
transmissions between multiple stations and their access point. RUs and TXOPs make
bandwidth usage more flexible: a station may use wider (resp. narrower) RUs and shorter
(resp. longer) TXOPs. Moreover, multiple parallel transmissions within a single channel
are possible.

4.1.2. RUs in Wi-Fi 6

To support fine-bandwidth granularities, Wi-Fi 6 uses a subcarrier spacing four times
narrower than Wi-Fi 5 (78.125 kHz vs. 312.5 kHz), which is visualized in Figure 3b.
Narrower RUs compared with legacy Wi-Fi help to increase the robustness of multipath
but they are also more sensitive to noise. The number of available RUs within a channel
depends on its bandwidth and the RU. For instance, an 80 MHz channel bandwidth may
contain a single 996-tone RU or 16 orthogonal 52-tone RUs. Table 6 lists all possible RU
sizes and the maximum number of RUs according to the channel width.

Table 6. RU sizes and their maximum numbers supported by the different channel widths.

RU 20 MHz 40 MHz 80 MHz 160 MHz

(or 2 · 80 MHz)
26-tone 9 18 37 74
52-tone 4 8 16 32
106-tone 2 4 8 16
242-tone 1 2 4 8
484-tone - 1 2 4
996-tone - - 1 2
2 × 996-tone - - - 1

Figure 7 depicts the various RU sizes supported in a 20 MHz channel. We have:

data subcarriers: these subcarriers transport data;
guard subcarriers: these subcarriers comprise 11 tones in total in a 20 MHz channel
and are located at the beginning and end of the channel;
null subcarriers: these subcarriers separate different subcarriers; with guard subcarri-
ers, they help to relieve interference from adjacent channels and sub-channels;
DC (direct conversion) subcarriers: these subcarriers indicate the center of the chan-
nel; their sizes may differ depending on the RU sizes.

Null subcarrier Data subcarrier DC Guard subcarrier

9 * 26-tone RUs 6 26 26 26 26 13 7 13 26 26 26 26 5

4 * 52-tone RUs 6 52 52 13 7 13 52 52 5

2 * 106-tone RUs 6 106 13 7 13 106 5

1 * 242-tone RUs 6 242 + 3 DC 5

20 MHz channel

Figure 7. RU sizes in a 20 MHz channel.

4.1.3. Duration of Symbols and Guard Intervals in Wi-Fi 6

Due to shorter subcarrier spacing, the symbol duration in Wi-Fi 6 has been updated
with different Guard Intervals (GIs) (Figure 3). A longer GI increases the tolerance to
jitter across users and leads to higher efficiency and throughput in the uplink MU OFDMA
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 13 of 52

compared to Wi-Fi 5. Thus, the bandwidth wasted by the GI is reduced. The larger GI
values are applied to combat the signal delay spread in outdoor environments [29].

4.1.4. New Frame Format

Four new frame formats and preamble fields are introduced to support the new
features and functionalities of Wi-Fi 6. The general structure of the frame remains similar
to legacy Wi-Fi for backward compatibility and coexistence. Figure 8 depicts these new
frame formats. The preamble of the incoming packet includes specific fields to identify the
used sub-channels and the frame format. The new preamble consists of two parts, legacy
(non-HE) and HE fields. The legacy fields support IEEE 802.11n/ac and the HE fields are
only readable by Wi-Fi 6.

Legacy Preamble HE Preamble

L-STF L-LTF L-SIG R-SIG HE-SIG-A HE ... -SIG-B HE-STF HE-LTF ... HE-LTF HE DATA

8 μs 8 μs 4 μs 4 μs
8 μs Only available for HE MU 4 μs Up to 8 fields 13.8/14.4/16 μs
Doubles for ER SU 4 μs per symbol Doubles 4.8/7.2/8/16 μs per symbol
up to 16 symbols for HE TB per symbol

Figure 8. Preamble format in Wi-Fi 6 depends on the frame type.

The four different types of HE Physical Layer Protocol Data Units ( PPDU) are distin-
guished by the preamble fields [5]:
HE Single-user (SU) PPDU: this frame is used for single-user transmissions.
HE ER SU PPDU: this frame is the same as the single-user transmission but designed
for outdoor environments with an Extended transmission Range.
HE MU PPDU: this frame is considered for one or multiple downlink transmission(s)
by adding the HE-SIG-B field to the single-user transmission frame.
HE Trigger-Based (TB) PPDU: this frame is used for multi-user uplink transmissions
in response to the Trigger Frame (TF) issued by the access point.
The new HE preamble fields that differentiate the frame formats are the following:
Repeated Legacy (non-HT) SIGNAL (RL-SIG): This field detects the beginning of
the HE frame.
HE-SIG-A: This field is a common field in all four Wi-Fi 6 frame formats. It carries
all the needed information for the types of transmissions and is two OFDM symbols
long. The information in this field differs depending on the frame type and whether
the transmission is single-user, multi-user, or TB. It contains information about the
packet to determine the link type (uplink or downlink), BSS color, TXOP duration,
bandwidth, number of spatial streams, and coding [30]. For an extended-range single-
user transmission, this is repeated one more time to improve the robustness against
interference and signal fading in outdoor scenarios [31].
HE-SIG-B: This field is specific to downlink multi-user transmissions. It is divided
into two parts. In the common part, it carries RU allocation information and it is
decodable by all the stations in the same sub-channel. The user-specific part has a
variable length and contains specific information for each user such as MCS, number
of spatial streams, coding, and station ID [32].
HE-STF and HE-LTF: The HE short training field (STF) and HE long training field
(LTF) are specific to MIMO operations. The former synchronizes a receiver with the
incoming frame in time and frequency. The latter is responsible for beamforming and
spatial diversity. For a TB frame, the duration of the HE-STF is twice as long.

4.2. Advances on the MAC Layer

Wi-Fi 6 introduces OFDMA to synchronously transmit multiple flows over disjoint
RUs. MAC mechanisms have to be adapted to support multiple transmissions in parallel.
Wi-Fi 6 extends the MAC layer so that legacy devices are still supported. In the following,
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 14 of 52

we first introduce the extensions of the RTS/CTS mechanism, detail downlink and uplink
transmissions, and then elaborate on the integration of the new mechanisms with EDCA.

4.2.1. Multi-User RTS/CTS Handshake

Wi-Fi 6 extends the legacy RTS/CTS handshake to a multi-user one. Indeed, OFDMA
implies that several transmitters/receivers may be active simultaneously using different
RUs. Thus, the RTS/CTS has to inform all the neighbors about the RUs and TXOP selected
for the next ongoing transmissions [33]. The mechanism also has to accommodate multiple
receivers and transmitters. For both RTS and CTS, the lowest modulation is used so that all
stations can decode them.
To accommodate multi-rate environments, Wi-Fi 6 uses a duration-based threshold to
trigger the RTS/CTS handshake. Indeed, transmission time is a better resource measure
than packet size.The access point tunes the RTS/CTS threshold effectively to avoid interfer-
ence and maximize efficiency [5,11]. The access point is always awake to have a complete
view of medium activity, whereas some power-saving stations may provisionally turn off
their radio chipsets.

4.2.2. Downlink Transmission

The entire procedure for downlink transmission is depicted in Figure 9. The access
point knows the data to be sent toward all stations and can schedule the RUs to the
receiving stations for the next TXOP. Then, it transmits a multi-user RTS frame and the
stations respond with a CTS to the access point through their scheduled RUs. Afterward, the
access point simultaneously transmits the entire data on the scheduled RUs to the receiving
stations. The transmission possibly covers multiple packets. When the transmission
is over, the stations acknowledge the correct reception of the data with a single Block
Acknowledgment (BA).

AP STAs AP STAs
40

CTS RU 1 (106-tone) BA

30
CTS RU 2 (26-tone) BA
Frequency (MHz)

CTS RU 3 (52-tone) BA

MU CTS RU 4 (26-tone) BA
20 RTS

SIFS SIFS SIFS

10 CTS RU 5 (242-tone) BA

Time
VoIP IoT Gaming Media

Figure 9. DL MU OFDMA transmission over different RUs and traffic demands within a 40 MHz channel.

4.2.3. Uplink Transmission

Uplink transmission is more complex than downlink transmission because the access
point must learn about the stations’ demands and inform the stations about the transmission
parameters. For this purpose, there are two approaches that we present below: uplink
OFDMA scheduled access and UORA.

Scheduled Access
With scheduled access, the access point schedules all the RUs for the next TXOP to
the stations, which prevents contention among the stations. The access point learns about
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 15 of 52

the stations’ demands either from Buffer Status Reports (BSRs) that piggybacked on earlier
data transmissions or explicitly asking the stations with a Buffer Status Report Poll (BSRP).
Figure 10a illustrates scheduled access with polling. The access point sends a BSRP
including the list of RUs for BSR transmissions. The stations randomly choose one of
these RUs to send their BSR to the access point. Based on this knowledge, the access point
schedules disjoint RUs to the stations for the next TXOP and notifies them with a multi-user
RTS/CTS handshake. The transmissions are protected from hidden terminals after the
reception of all CTSs.
TXOP TXOP
AP
AP STAs AP STAs AP STAs (1-5) AP STAs (1-4) AP
TF-R
40 40
BSR
STA 5
CTS RU 1 (106-tone) AID 0 RU 1 (106-tone)
BSR RU 1 STA 1
STA 2
30 30
CTS RU 2 (26-tone)

Frequency (MHz)
Coll
Frequency (MHz)

CTS RU 3 (52-tone) AID 0 RU 2 (106-tone)

BSR RU 2 IDLE
STA 1 CTS RU 4 (26-tone)
MU
20 BSRP TF MSBA
RTS 20 MSBA
Coll
AID 2 RU 3 (106-tone)
Coll RU 3 STA 2
SIFS SIFS SIFS SIFS SIFS SIFS SIFS SIFS
10 CTS RU 5 (242-tone)
BSR 10
STA 4
AID 2045 RU 4 (106-tone)
BSR RU 4 STA 4
STA 3

Time
VoIP IoT Gaming Media Time

(a) (b)
Figure 10. UL MU OFDMA scheduled and random access within a 40 MHz channel. (a) UL MU
OFDMA scheduled access transmission over different RUs and traffic demands. (b) UL OFDMA
random access (UORA) transmission over different RUs (stations 1, 2, and 3 have the Association
Identifiers (AIDs) 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Station 4 is unassociated).

The access point then broadcasts a Trigger Frame (TF) to distribute the parameters for
the uplink transmissions. It contains a list of available RUs and AID values, which maps
resources to stations, as well as optimized transmission parameters (MCS, target Received
Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), FEC coding type, and more).
When the schedule is announced, all other transmissions are interspaced by the SIFS.
Thus, no collisions can occur after the reservation is made by the access point. Afterward,
the stations start their transmissions on the assigned RUs for the proposed TXOP. At the
end of the TXOP, the access point broadcasts a single Multi-Station Block Acknowledgment
(MSBA) via OFDM using the entire channel. It is sent with the lowest modulation to
be decodable by all stations. The message lists all correctly received frames during the
last TXOP.

Random Access
Although scheduled access assigns all RUs to specific stations, random access leaves
at least some RUs for the stations to be used in contention mode. Moreover, there is no
multi-user RTS/CTS handshake to limit the overhead.
The access point triggers UORA mode. The access point first broadcasts a list of
available RUs for random access in a Trigger Frame Random (TF-R) [34]. This is a Trigger
Frame (TF) with at least one RU for random access instead of scheduled access. The
TF-R sets the Network Allocation Vector (NAV) for legacy stations instead of an RTS/CTS
handshake. The TF-R also contains a list of available RUs and AID values. Here, an AID
of 0 stands for the associated stations and an AID of 2045 stands for the unassociated
stations. Any other AID value corresponds to scheduled access. Thus, an associated (resp.
unassociated) station can contend for any RU with an AID equal to 0 (resp. 2045). In
particular, a station does not create collisions with scheduled frames when it engages
an association.
Upon the reception of the TF-R, all associated/unassociated non-scheduled stations
that have data to send try to access one of the available random-access RUs. Each station
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 16 of 52

adapts CSMA/CA by decrementing its backoff counter independently for each of the RUs
assigned for the random access in the TF-R [35]. The winning stations transmit their data
in the accessed RUs. Finally, the access point acknowledges the received packets by a
Multi-Station Block Acknowledgment (MSBA).
Figure 10b illustrates the mechanism with four contending stations. Stations 1–3
are already associated with a member of the BSS, having AIDs 1, 2, and 3, respectively,
whereas station 4 is unassociated. As RU 3 is assigned to AID 2 (station 2), there will be no
contention for its resources. Conversely, RUs 1 and 2 are for any associated station (AID 0).
We assume that the backoff of station 1 is equal to zero and it competes in RU 1 (it would
have selected RU 2 if its backoff was equal to 1). Station 3 has either no frame to send or its
backoff value is strictly larger than 1 (it will be decremented by two after this UORA phase).
Finally, RU 4 is reserved for the unassociated stations (AID 2045). We further assume that
the backoff of station 4 is equal to zero so it tries to compete in RU 4.

4.2.4. Integration of EDCA

For backward compatibility, a Wi-Fi 6 access point must support both legacy Wi-Fi
and Wi-Fi 6 stations. However, legacy Wi-Fi stations support only OFDM access, whereas
Wi-Fi 6 transmissions may be multiplexed with OFDMA. Thus, the access point will switch
between two modes: (i) transmissions in OFDMA with only Wi-Fi 6 stations and (ii)
transmissions in OFDMA with legacy Wi-Fi stations. In particular, the access point must
exclude legacy Wi-Fi stations when an OFDMA phase engages. To exclude these stations,
the access point can tune the EDCA parameters. Examples are the AIFS Number defining
the inter-frame space and the minimum and maximum contention windows.
Wi-Fi 6 defines two sets of EDCA parameters:
1. Legacy EDCA parameters are applied for non-Wi-Fi 6 stations and Wi-Fi 6 stations in
single-user mode;
2. Specific multi-user EDCA parameters are used when several transmissions are multi-
plexed over multiple RUs. Stations use these parameters after an uplink multi-user
transmission from the access point [11,36]. Conversely, they re-apply the legacy
parameters when the multi-user transmissions are terminated.
Figure 11 depicts the MU EDCA procedure. When the station receives the TF, it applies
the multi-user EDCA parameters for channel access, starts transmission, and sets the timer
to listen for upcoming TFs to update the timer. If it does not receive a new TF and the timer
expires, it falls back to legacy EDCA mode.

TF DATA ACK DATA ACK

Legacy EDCA
MU EDCA timer Legacy EDCA period
period

Figure 11. MU EDCA procedure.

4.3. Related Work

Wi-Fi 6 provides a framework for scheduling data transmissions but does not propose
any specific scheduling algorithms. Therefore, a large number of papers focus on the
scheduling process. We review the related works concerning random access, centralized
approach, real-time/QoS scheduling, optimization, cross-layer scheduling, synchronization,
and performance evaluation.

4.3.1. Random Access

CSMA/CA means that collisions may arise that negatively impact the throughput and
the energy efficiency. Thus, many propositions adapt random access to reduce the number
of collisions.
Some approaches added an additional exponential backoff procedure. For instance,
hybrid UORA [37] used a multi-carrier CSMA analytical model based on Markov chains.
A station first uses a primary backoff as usual to grant a TXOP for its data transmission.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 17 of 52

However, instead of transmitting its frame immediately, the station may engage a secondary
backoff procedure according to a given probability depending on the Markov model. The
secondary backoff counter reduces the number of collisions among the selected stations for
the transmission. The entire procedure takes place within a TXOP. CRUI [38] also relied
on an extra backoff stage during which each station sends a busy signal at a given offset
depending on its priority. Only the station with the largest priority, i.e., with the earliest
busy signal, wins the contention and is allowed to transmit for the corresponding TXOP.
A winner can also grant the rest of the TXOP to a secondary station with a lower priority
when it has finished transmitting its frames.
Some other approaches tried to find the optimal backoff selection parameters or ap-
plied the backoff differently. Kim et al. [39] concluded that the number of stations does not
increase the contention probability if the OFDMA contention window is tuned optimally.
Therefore, they proposed a distributed backoff counter controller. Every station adjusts
its backoff counter regarding the earlier transmission’s success or failure. If the earlier
transmission is successful, a station will decrease its backoff counter to allow other stations
to allocate more RUs and vice versa in case of transmission failure. Wang et al. [40] mini-
mized latency and improved throughput by retransmitting without the backoff procedure.
The station had a second transmission opportunity for unsuccessful transmissions with a
complementary probability. This method is effective when the number of stations is less
than the number of random access RUs.
Xi et al. [41] proposed a multi-dimensional busy-tone approach to solve contention
among stations that use the same RU. More precisely, each station selects a random backoff
value and sends a signal during the arbitration phase’s sub-slots that corresponds to one in
its backoff value. Thus, the station knows that it lost the TXOP if a signal is received during
a sub-slot corresponding to a zero in its backoff value. A turnaround time is required
during each sub-slot so that a station can switch its radio chipset from transmission to
reception. This significantly complicates the implementation and wastes radio bandwidth.
In addition, these approaches break the compatibility with other Wi-Fi 6 devices.
Artificial intelligence techniques have also been applied to optimize performance. The
deep reinforcement learning technique, more specifically a convolutional neural network,
was exploited to propose a distributed RU selection scheme to improve throughput and
delay [42]. The scheme operates with CSMA/CA to enable a station to select the right RU
considering a fixed number of previous channel allocations. Likewise, ref. [43] applied two
other techniques, namely deep Q-network (DQN) and deep deterministic policy gradient
(DDPG). The authors who leveraged those methods predicted the optimal contention
window size regarding past behaviors to achieve high network throughput.
Islam et al. [44] proposed a hybrid MAC to assign RUs to stations in two steps. Firstly,
RUs are fairly distributed among the stations. Then, multiple stations that select the same
RU contend to access the RU using the legacy CSMA/CA method. However, such an
approach is static and assumes that each station generates the same amount of traffic. In
addition, it just reduces the collision probability but may not function efficiently in dense
networks. Lee et al. [45] proposed hybrid channel access to alleviate the collisions in dense
networks. Firstly, they modeled the upper bound efficiency of random access concerning
the number of stations, contention window, and available RUs. Next, they adjusted the
OFDMA contention window for uplink OFDMA to its optimal value to produce results
similar to the developed model.
Bhattarai et al. [46] proposed to fairly allocate the optimal number of random and
scheduled RUs to provide high throughput. The access point assigns scheduled RUs to the
stations from which it received a BSR. Then, it leaves the remaining RUs for other stations
to contend for the channel access. Efficient Resource Allocation (ERA) [47] classified
stations according to their load. Three classes were created with a different RU width to
accommodate the different traffic loads. Stations with more traffic to send are assigned to
an RU with a larger bandwidth.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 18 of 52

Baiocchi et al. [48] adapted Wi-Fi 6 to implement random access in the frequency
domain. The stations send tones (i.e., non-modulated signals) to compete for medium
access. An ordered list of subcarriers is used to transmit the tones: only the stations that do
not detect any tones transmitted through a lower subcarrier win the round. After a few
rounds, the collision probability becomes very small.
The authors of [49] offered a better user experience by enabling the access point to
assign the stations to multiple groups. Then, it assigns the resources to each of these groups.
The authors defined a utility function based on the user data rate and minimum bandwidth
requirement. The access point applies K-mean clustering based on the closeness of the
stations’ utility functions to group the stations. Finally, it assigns RUs to these groups to
have a maximum utility value per group.
Conversely, we can adopt a user-centric (selfish) approach: each user can indepen-
dently select its access point while trying to globally balance the load [50]. A station
considers the signal strength of the neighboring access points as well as its relative capacity,
achievable data rate, and the location of other stations. Since this method is user-centric, it
greatly reduces the overhead, but the system may fall in a local optimum, or even worse
may result in oscillations.

4.3.2. Centralized Approaches

Access points may execute a centralized scheduling scheme to assign RUs to different
users. Some works aimed to maximize efficiency. Karaca et al. [51] investigated the impact
of the PPDU duration. Indeed, a fixed PPDU means less flexibility. If different stations
do not have the same amount of traffic to forward, padding is required. They determine
the scheduling duration according to the padding overhead, the airtime fairness, and the
energy consumption. The authors demonstrated that their algorithm is close to the optimal
strategy through a Lyapunov optimization.
The authors of [52] applied a deep reinforcement learning technique to optimize the
MAC layer resource allocation. The contending station measures the channel collision
probability considering all the observed timeslots between two consecutive backoff stages.
Using this probability, it calculates the optimal contention window size. Then, they applied
a Q-learning technique to optimize the performance of the mechanism.
Bankov et al. [53] considered the RU allocation as an optimization problem. The target
was to find the best pair of RUs and MCSs for each station. However, Wi-Fi 6 presents
specific properties that must be considered during the scheduling process. In particular,
Wi-Fi 6 restricts the usage of RUs. For instance, a 106-tone RU cannot be randomly located
in a 40 MHz channel. They applied the Hungarian algorithm [54] to compute the most
efficient scheduling matrix. Considering this optimization task, they also adapted three
LTE schedulers to the Wi-Fi 6 constraints. Tutelian et al. [55] introduced a utility function
for the quality of the RUs considering the number of stations, available RUs, and MCSs.
The utility function value is the transmission rate that depends on the RU and the MCS.
They used a greedy heuristic to solve the optimization problem. The stations are sorted in
descending order according to the utility function. The widest RU is assigned to the first
station in the list and this assignment continues until all stations are scheduled. The same
round is repeated for the MCS assignment.
The following articles focused on maximizing the sum of the rates achieved indi-
vidually by each of the emitters in the network. The authors of [56] aimed to maximize
the utility of the long-term average rates of stations. To do this, they solved the optimal
uplink resource allocation problem by employing Lyapunov optimization, respecting the
average rate and power constraints. Wang et al. [57] solved a relaxed resource allocation
problem via a divide-and-conquer algorithm where a user can be assigned to multiple
RUs. However, a station should receive at most one RU for its transmissions, increasing the
complexity as the optimal assignment requires an exhaustive search. Thus, two heuristics,
greedy or recursive, can help to solve the original assignment problem, allocating one RU
per station. An extended version [58] also considered fairness among users.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 19 of 52

Some papers utilized scheduled and random accesses together. The authors of [59]
proposed a hybrid mechanism for channel utilization. They introduced three control
packets to collect and send information with limited flexibility in network size. This
mechanism was an alternative for TF-R and is now deprecated. In the beginning, the access
point acquires the demands and assigns the RUs to the requesting stations. Stations that did
not ask for a dedicated resource and have data to send can contend to access the remaining
non-allocated RUs. Yang et al. [60,61] also leveraged a utility metric to maximize utility and
user satisfaction. They managed the RU transfer between scheduled and random access
users. Moreover, they suggested a scheduling scheme to distribute the RUs by accounting
for the probability distribution of multi-cell interference. The authors of [62] proposed
hybrid channel access in the channel contention phase to assign the RUs efficiently. In the
contention phase, the stations with expired backoff randomly select RUs to send the BSR.
Then, other stations sense the channel to find free RUs. They resume the backoff counter
and try to select one of these resources. The procedure continues until all the stations
successfully allocate resources or there are no more RUs.
The authors of [63] grouped the stations in a BSS to reduce collision and interference.
They clustered the geographically close stations. Each cluster has a leader station that
contends to access the channel for the whole cluster. The access point schedules these
leaders and subsequently, leaders schedule their member stations based on their available
resources. However, it needs to modify the Wi-Fi 6 standard.
Joo et al. [64] improved the throughput by making the network capable of sharing a
single RU among multiple stations. Virtual timeslots within an RU distinguish the timing
for each station’s access to the medium.
The authors of [65] leveraged OFDMA to enable unidirectional full-duplex trans-
missions. The access point has self-interference cancellation antennas so that it can both
transmit and receive different signals. However, the stations do not have this kind of
complex hardware and they are not full duplex. Thus, the access point must identify the
hidden terminals. They use two OFDM symbol times for signaling. In the first OFDM
symbol time, the access point gathers the uplink transmission demands of the stations. In
the second OFDM symbol time, it compares these demands with its downlink traffic and
finds the hidden stations accordingly. Then, transmissions can take place, full-duplex for
the access point and half-duplex for the receiving stations.
Karthik et al. [66] adapted EDCA to OFDMA to enable priority access. The access
point executes a scheduler that assigns different contention window sizes to each station.
More precisely, the EDCA algorithm is executed virtually by the access point to decide the
station that will use each RU within a PPDU. Because of the virtual execution, no collisions
are actually created; the access point selects a single winner. The station receives an RU if
its backoff value is smaller than the available RUs. The RU size that the station allocates is
a factor of 26-tone RU. It defines a limit for the number of 26-tone RUs participating in a
single transmission using the Min–Max and Z-score normalization functions.
Kim et al. [67] proposed a new multi-user OFDMA frame format to maximize trans-
mission efficiency. They proposed to find the optimal length of the multi-user frame,
considering the status of the buffer and the bitrate of the stations. They proved that the
problem is NP-complete, and decomposed it into subproblems that they solved sequentially.
CC-MAC [68] is a centralized contention-based MAC that exploits uplink OFDMA
random access. Firstly, the access point sends a Contention Period Announcement (CPA)
frame. Then, each active station selects a random slot after the CPA to send an association
ID signal. Thus, the access point knows the list of pending frames and announces the
winners in a Contention Resolution (CR) frame. If the number of winners is strictly larger
than the number of RUs, the access point must select a subset to announce in its CR frame.
Finally, the winning stations can start their transmission synchronously. This mechanism is
an alternative to BSR and TF concepts.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 20 of 52

4.3.3. Real-time/QoS Scheduling

The support of real-time flows is becoming dominant for novel Wi-Fi usage such
as industrial applications (see Section 3.3). In particular, the MAC layer must be able to
guarantee a bounded latency for high-priority flows and provide QoS to assign a larger
bandwidth to critical flows. Hopefully, Wi-Fi 6 relies on a schedule of transmissions and
may work without collision when the access point knows the requests of each station.
Filoso et al. [69] considered latency-bound traffic with strict deadlines. They prioritized
emergency messages and enqueued them in an emergency queue. Depending on the
number of packets in the emergency queue and the maximum number of devices to
transmit simultaneously, flows are scheduled in parallel and assigned to RUs to meet the
waiting deadlines.
Traffic asymmetry has already been identified as a key problem in legacy Wi-Fi [70].
Indeed, the stations and access point have the same priority for medium access, whereas
the access point transmits more packets. Khorov et al. [71] corroborated the inefficiency of
trigger-based OFDMA while the Wi-Fi 6 access point was competing with legacy stations
for channel access. To be able to give more transmission opportunities to the access point,
they proposed to use different EDCA parameter sets for the access point and legacy stations.
Reliability and data delivery are also critical for providing QoS. Cyclic Resource
Assignment (CRA) [72] targets real-time applications (RTA) to meet the critical latency and
reliability constraints. Primarily, it randomly schedules stations and assigns 26-tone RUs
to them. Therefore, it can schedule a large number of stations in parallel. In the case of
collision, the access point specifies an RU to the stations to transmit without collision. The
authors of [73] focused on time-sensitive traffic. To predict data stream deadlines on the
access point, the access point regularly retrieves the stations’ queue sizes through BSR. This
provides a realistic approximation of the stations’ deadlines and then assigns the RUs to the
stations based on the estimated deadlines. Thereby, it minimizes packet loss significantly.

4.3.4. Optimization
Interactive flows are sensitive to latency. Bankov et al. [74] proposed, e.g., to minimize
the upload time in uplink OFDMA. They greedily picked different stations according
to their remaining upload time and assign them to different RUs. The authors of [75]
applied a queue-based drift plus a penalty algorithm [76] to select the transmit power
and resource allocation per timeslot to minimize the queue length. It divides the period
between two consecutive TFs to multiple timeslots and allocates the RUs per timeslot,
i.e., it is large enough for transmission. Zheng et al. [77] doubled the OFDMA contention
window in the case of a station’s failure. More precisely, this happens when the number of
the unsuccessful transmissions exceeds the retransmission limit or when the number of
active stations exceeds the number of available random access RUs Kim et al. [78] clustered
stations with similar expected transmission delays to transmit their data simultaneously.
This enhanced the uplink channel usage. The transmission scheduling was based on a
proportional fair-based approach.
Throughput optimization was the main objective of the following works. The authors
in [79] concentrated on optimizing the network’s capacity when mixing scheduled and
random access. Primarily, they defined the capacity entropy to measure the capacity of
the network. Then, they modeled UORA mode with a Markov chain to derive the access
probability and thus the capacity of the random access mode. Finally, they proposed a hy-
brid mode that relied on a greedy algorithm. The formulation relied on a set of constraints,
defining the capacity and the channel quality perceived by each station. Chen et al. [80] de-
termined the contention window size utilizing deep reinforcement learning to optimize the
throughput. It monitored the network under different circumstances and set the window
size accordingly. A Markov decision process solved the optimization problem by taking
into account the current window size, status of the nodes, and network throughput.
The following papers aimed to improve the throughput with a constraint on queue
length. A scheduling mechanism for downlink OFDMA with minimum throughput re-
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 21 of 52

quirements wass introduced in [81]. It was modeled with a Lyapunov optimization,

considering a weighted Max–Min fairness. The authors derived a near-optimal scheduling
policy to maximize the throughput. The OFDMA scheduler in [82] aimed to maximize
the throughput and minimize the end-to-end latency in a multi-user scenario for both
downlink and uplink. This optimization problem considered the queue length, MCS, and
traffic priority of stations to assign optimal RUs to the clients. Likewise, Filoso et al. [83]
considered the priority and fairness jointly while allocating RUs for stations. Queue length
and data priorities served as inputs to a closed-loop feedback controller.
Since Wi-Fi 6 exploits the unlicensed band, some approaches tried to maximize the
throughput with co-existing networks. The authors of [84] maximized the total network
throughput by proposing a probabilistic channel aggregation mechanism and applying
a deep reinforcement learning technique to tune the probabilities. The objective was to
maximize the sum of the throughput of the Wi-Fi 6 and legacy stations. If an RU is partially
utilized, the station should sense it with a higher probability for aggregation. The authors
of [85] investigated the coexistence of WLAN and LTE systems. They maximized the
network throughput by grouping the nodes in Wi-Fi and LTE networks. They solved an
optimization problem using a genetic algorithm to find the optimal grouping with the
constraint on packet delay.
The authors of [86] improved the throughput and reduced the delay by determining
the contention window to avoid collisions. The mechanism calculated the optimal con-
tention window size according to the number of backoff stages and conditional collision
probability. Cheng et al. [87] implemented a traffic load perception mechanism to actively
switch between random access and scheduled access. The mechanism switches to sched-
uled access when the traffic flow crosses the threshold and for the rest of the transmissions,
it utilizes random access. The threshold value is computed to minimize the delay and
maximize the throughput.
The authors of [88] proposed an aware-backup padding automatic repeat request
(ARQ) solution for multi-user transmissions. Instead of padding an A-MPDU frame with
dummy bits to align the duration of all the transmissions, the authors introduced backup
packets. More precisely, a transmission is lost when an error occurs in both the original and
the duplicated subframes. Since Wi-Fi 6 already handles duplicated frames, this scheme is
still standard-compliant and may cohabit with legacy Wi-Fi 6 stations. The objective of [89]
was to use the minimum number of access points while providing fault tolerance and user
satisfaction. An analytical model considering channel assignment and power adjustment
was derived in an early step. Then, a heuristic algorithm based on a greedy approach was
introduced to solve the NP-hard optimization problem.

4.3.5. Cross-Layer Scheduling

Sharon et al. [90] introduced three scheduling mechanisms for unidirectional TCP
downlink transmission. The first solution enables stations to send back TCP acknowledg-
ments within the same TXOP without initiating uplink transmission. By accelerating the
TCP feedback, the sender can increase its throughput faster. In the second mechanism,
both the access point and the stations contend to access the medium using EDCA. The
access point serves the stations in a round-robin order and if a station wins medium access,
it tries to send back the TCP acknowledgment. Finally, the third mechanism is designed for
multi-user transmissions by transmitting data to multiple stations within a single PPDU.
The same authors extended this scheme [91] to optimize TCP goodput. Their approach
evaluates TCP goodput with different TXOP durations. They considered the TXOP length
an essential element for achieving the best TCP goodput. Short TXOPs are long enough to
receive the largest TCP segments.

4.3.6. Synchronization
OFDMA-based multiple access for IEEE 802.11ax (OMAX) [92] resolves the synchro-
nization problem. The stations sense the whole channel rather than RUs to avoid inter-
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 22 of 52

ference and the backoff decreases by the number of RUs. Upon backoff completion, each
station randomly chooses one of the RUs. Moreover, it enhances the RTS/CTS mechanism
by embedding the scheduling in CTS to reduce overheads in the network. Furthermore, [93]
introduced a symbol-timing synchronization scheme for uplink multi-user scenarios to
enhance the synchronization quality. This symbol timing depends on the legacy and HE
802.11 preambles to provide synchronous frame arrival in uplink multi-user mode.

4.3.7. Performance Evaluation

Most of the Wi-Fi 6 performance evaluations have focused on throughput. The
authors of [94] and [95] presented an analytical model to evaluate both the downlink and
uplink throughputs. They considered single-user and multi-user scenarios with UDP-like
traffic and different network sizes. In particular, they proved the throughput superior-
ity of this standard compared to Wi-Fi 5. Wi-Fi 6 also provides a shorter delay when
the number of stations increases. Uwei et al. [96] analytically evaluated UORA perfor-
mance using a bidimensional Markov chain model. This model considered the number of
contending users and the transmission probability for throughput evaluation. Similarly,
Lenante et al. [97] proposed an analytical model based on a Markov chain to improve the
throughput for saturated flows. The model was based on the backoff counter value and
the number of available RUs. It then calculated the transmission and collision probability.
Bellalta et al. [98] focused on the AP-initiated OFDMA and MU MIMO features. In par-
ticular, the different A-MPDU must be aligned when several stations transmit in parallel
through different sub-channels. Matlab simulations validated this analytical model.
Network simulations have also been conducted to measure the performance of
Wi-Fi 6. The authors of [99] validated OFDMA performance using NS-3 simulations.
Naik et al. [100] analyzed the performance of uplink multi-user OFDMA. They introduced
the BSR delivery rate metric to measure a network’s performance in dense deployments.
They concluded that the throughput depends on the distribution of random access and
scheduled access. Additionally, a tradeoff exists between this metric and the throughput
as they have an inverse relationship. Dolinska et al. [101] focused on concurrent transmis-
sions and per-user throughput in OPNET. They indicated that Wi-Fi 6 users outperform
legacy Wi-Fi by four times in throughput mainly because of less collisions even with a
large number of transmissions in parallel. The authors in [102] developed a lightweight
simulator to evaluate uplink/downlink OFDMA performance. They concluded that in-
creasing the number of scheduled access RUs improves the throughput, whereas increasing
the number of random access RUs degrades the throughput. In addition, the OFDMA
contention window has to be carefully adjusted to bound the number of contending stations
to reduce collisions.
Madhavan et al. [103] developed an analog/digital mixed large-scale integration (LSI).
They used an evaluation board to validate their approach and to measure the throughput
achieved by Wi-Fi 6. In particular, the novel standard offers a 2.1 times higher throughput
than Wi-Fi 5.
Latency is another essential criterion for time-critical applications. The authors of [104]
considered the same assumptions as [96,97] but quantified the average access delay, which
is particularly important for real-time networks. The authors in [105] investigated Wi-
Fi 6 performance with and without multi-user EDCA channel access mode in a dense
network. A low multi-user EDCA timer can significantly improve the throughput and
reduce the real-time application latency compared to legacy EDCA. Furthermore, an upper
bound on the network size is obtained for different multi-user EDCA periods and MCSs
to achieve optimal performance. Weller et al. [106] evaluated downlink OFDMA in a
testbed and concluded that downlink OFDMA does not considerably improve latency.
Its performance depends on the access point’s proper scheduling. Avallone et al. [107]
implemented OFDMA in NS-3 to evaluate the improvements compared to legacy Wi-Fi.
They observed that OFDMA reduces the latency, has more overheads in acknowledgment
transmission, minimizes the padding necessity, and extends range coverage.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 23 of 52

The authors of [108] investigated the coexistence of Dedicated Short Range Com-
munications (DSRC) as a vehicular communication protocol in IEEE 802.11p and up-
link/downlink transmissions in Wi-Fi 6. The analysis indicated that both types of networks
may cohabit friendly in the same band, fairly sharing the bandwidth. Lee et al. [109]
introduced a similar model for an unsaturated case. They also considered heterogeneous
deployments with non-802.11ax traffic. They modeled the channel access analytically using
Markov chains. They used simulation to evaluate the network regarding the variable num-
ber of stations, different frame arrival rates, the impact of RU contention and non-802.11ax
traffic, and tuning EDCA parameter sets.

5. SR in Wi-Fi 6
We first explain the concept of SR and then its challenges in Wi-Fi. Finally, we present
new mechanisms in Wi-Fi 6 to improve SR.

5.1. Concept
A BSS regroups stations that use the same parameters (e.g., security, radio channel) to
access the medium. Two BSSs are overlapping if their signals can be mutually detected. In
Figure 12, a laptop is in the intra-BSS area of BSS 1 and it is an inter-BSS node for BSS 2.
An access point defines the parameters for its BSS and orchestrates the transmissions. It
regularly broadcasts beacon frames that contain information about the channel used by the
access point, encryption information, or power saving (see Section 2.2.3).
Legacy Wi-Fi has only limited capabilities for SR. Access points that are substantially
apart from each other may use the same channel to communicate with the stations within
their BSSs. When the BSSs are within each other’s transmission ranges and operate on the
same channel, this causes huge interference [110], increases the congestion, and leads to
poor data rates. Interference may become a problem in dense deployments with many
access points within a small area as the number of different channels is insufficient to avoid
overlapping BSSs.
Applying SR among overlapping BSSs increases spectrum reuse that results in a higher
throughput and network capacity. Each station identifies the originating BSS of the ongoing
data packets: if the packets are from different BSSs and the signal strengths are lower than
a predefined threshold, the station can transmit its data concurrently on the same channel.

BSS 1 BSS 2
CH 5 CH 5

AP 1 AP 2

A
a
are
OBS
S SS
_PD a-B
TR Intr

Figure 12. Two overlapping BSSs: the smartphone and the laptop are in the hearing range of both
access points.

5.2. Challenges with SR in Legacy Wi-Fi

With SR, different BSSs utilize the same channel via the CSMA/CA protocol. When
BSSs overlap and use overlapping channels, they cause more collisions [110] and a poor
data rate. This leads to problems with legacy Wi-Fi that we illustrate in the following
figure Figure 13.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 24 of 52

OBSS PDlevel

OBSS_PDmax Allowable OBSS_PDlevel

-62 dBm and TX_PWR

OBSS_PDmin
-82 dBm
(Legacy Wi-Fi)

TX_PWRref TX_PWR
Calculated TX-PWR
based on measured 21 dBm
receiving signal strength

Figure 13. OBSS PD: A station’s inter-BSS NAV is updated only if the RSSI of an inter-BSS packet is
larger than the OBSS_PDlevel . Otherwise, the station can perform a concurrent transmission with a
transmission power that can be derived from this diagram when the OBSS_PDlevel is given.

The NAV is a timer that helps to block stations during an ongoing transmission.
The backoff is paused during the NAV, forbidding the competing stations to start their
transmission. In legacy Wi-Fi, only a single NAV exists and is updated after overhearing any
transmissions. Thus, it may cause collisions if two different BSSs have parallel transmissions
with different durations. A node may be a neighbor of the two transmitters that belong
to two different BSSs. This neighbor will overhear the first RTS/CTS reservation and
update its NAV. Then, the same neighbor will overhear the second RTS/CTS from the
second BSS and will overwrite the existing NAV with those contained in the new RTS. If
the second NAV value is short enough, the neighbor may create a collision since it will
consider erroneously that the medium has been released.
If a station receives an RTS with a weak signal strength, the sender is far away from
the receiver station. Then, the upcoming transmission will not be impaired by a potential
transmission of the receiver. In that case, setting the NAV by the receiver station is not
needed. This unnecessarily prevents the receiver station from sending, which is a waste of
transmission resources.

5.3. Mechanisms for Spatial Reuse in Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi 6 exploits BSS coloring to differentiate traffic from different BSSs. Intra- and
inter-BSS NAVs avoid erroneous NAV resets that cause collisions. Further mechanisms
facilitate simultaneous transmissions on a channel by different BSSs.

5.3.1. BSS Coloring

BSS coloring [111] is an inherited feature from IEEE 802.11ah to distinguish traffic
from different BSSs. It is a 6-bit field in the novel frame preamble [112]. The access points
operating on the same channel should have different BSS colors. A station uses the BSS
color in the preamble to make a distinction between intra- and inter-BSS transmissions.

5.3.2. Intra- and Inter-BSS NAV

The standard proposes that a station utilizes distinct NAVs for different BSSs. A station
updates its NAV value independently for each BSS color whenever a NAV value is read
in a frame and when a Cf-end frame is received. A station can transmit a frame only if
all its NAV values are equal to zero, preventing collisions. However, most devices and
research papers approximate BSS-specific NAVs with one intra-BSS NAV and one inter-BSS
NAV [113].
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 25 of 52

5.3.3. Overlapping BSS Packet Detection (OBSS PD)

With Overlapping Basic Service Set Packet Detect (OBSS PD), nodes can disregard
inter-BSS traffic received with a low signal strength. To improve the overall throughput, a
novel Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) threshold is defined for inter-BSS traffic called the
OBSS_PDlevel . If a station receives an inter-BSS frame, it updates its inter-BSS NAV only if
the sensed RSSI is larger than the OBSS_PDlevel .
The OBSS_PDlevel and TX_PWR as the transmission power of a station have an
inverse relationship. Thus, a higher OBSS_PDlevel implies a lower TX_PWR to avoid
interference with transmissions in other BSSs. The value for the OBSS_PDlevel is in the
range of OBSS_PDmin = −82 dBm, which corresponds to the normal CCA threshold and
OBSS_PDmax = −62 dBm [5,12]. The transmission power TX_PWR is calculated using the
following equation:

TX_PWR = TX_PWRre f − (OBSS_PDlevel − OBSS_PDmin ) (1)

In other words, a large OBSS_PDlevel allows a node to overhear inter-BSS traffic with
a low signal strength. Moreover, the mechanism permits a station to start transmission in
the presence of inter-BSS traffic if it reduces the transmission power of its own signal.
Differentiated OBSS PD treatment of inter-BSS traffic may be helpful if some of them
are close and others are further away. To that end, OBSS PD has been extended with spatial
reuse groups (SRGs). One SRG is a set of BSSs for which specific OBSS PD parameters are
defined [12]. Finally, we have:
• CCA parameters for intra-BSS traffic;
• OBSS PD parameters for inter-BSS traffic that is part of the same spatial reuse group;
• General OBSS PD parameters for the remaining inter-BSS traffic.

5.3.4. Parameterized Spatial Reuse (PSR)

Parameterized Spatial Reuse (PSR) is an alternative adaptive approach to support
more concurrent transmissions. Each access point embeds its tolerable interference level
and its transmission power within the Trigger Frames (TFs) to inform overlapping BSSs
about concurrent uplink transmissions [98]. The maximum interference level depends on
the RSSI, the minimum SNR of the highest MCS, and a safety margin. It is computed in a
way that interfering signals with this strength at the most do not impair the reception of
valid signals. Receiving stations measure the RSSI and use the transmission power coded in
the frame to compute the loss in signal strength. The maximum interference level and this
loss of signal strength propose a maximum value for the receiving station’s transmission
power. The station must apply a transmission power below the proposed values for all
neighboring access points. This mechanism may lead to low transmission power, low MCS,
and longer data transmission.

5.4. Related Works

In this section, we categorize the related works in SR concerning threshold manipula-
tion, MAC modification, rate control, and performance evaluation.

5.4.1. Threshold Manipulation

The efficiency of SR increases by increasing the carrier-sensing threshold value. How-
ever, decreasing the value causes the hidden node problem, which may be symmetric or
asymmetric. In the symmetrical hidden node problem, station A does not trigger station
B’s carrier sense threshold and accordingly, B cannot hear from A. This causes repetitive
collisions among these two stations. The asymmetric hidden node problem means that
station A is located out of the carrier sense range of station B but station A can hear station B.
Thus, B causes collisions for the packets of A while A lets some packets from B be received.
Then, the backoff value will increase more frequently for A than for B. The asymmetric
hidden node problem can happen in both inter- and intra-BSSs causing severe unfairness
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 26 of 52

among stations [114]. The problem is handled by different parameter values (transmission
power, etc.).
The following papers focused on resolving the hidden node problem. Controlling the
threshold or applying RTS/CTS help to reduce the hidden terminal problem [114]. The
impact of hidden nodes on the uplink transmissions in the presence of legacy Wi-Fi and
Wi-Fi 6 stations was investigated in [115,116]. They proposed three possible solutions:
(1) increasing the threshold of all stations in the association phase with an HE access point;
(2) specifying different channels for adjacent BSSs; (3) the NAV of a station could only be
set if an intra-BSS station is transmitting data. Sou et al. [117] proposed a trigger-based
approach for uplink multi-user transmissions. The access point sends a multi-user RTS.
If some stations do not respond because they have a non-zero NAV (i.e., they are hidden
nodes), other stations not in the trigger list can respond with a CTS if they have a zero NAV.
Some other works focused on optimal CCA threshold tuning. Dynamic Sensitivity
Control (DSC) [118,119] tunes the carrier sense threshold of the access point according
to the RSSI of the farest station to transmit more data concurrently. This means that
the access point tunes the value based on the worst case. The performance of DSC was
examined in [120] where DSC with a well-tuned margin for threshold outperformed legacy
mechanisms in throughput. Nonetheless, it also depends on the node density and topology.
The fairness in medium access also depends on the margin. Since DSC causes a hidden node
problem, [121] combined it with RTS/CTS. The authors of [122] leveraged DSC and TDMA
mechanisms jointly to solve the hidden node problem. They proposed to reserve multiple
stations or one BSS within a time interval to have timely orthogonal BSSs. Yan et al. [123]
bound the CCA threshold value in the PSR mechanism, which manages parallel link
interference, to improve QoS. The authors in [124,125] leveraged stochastic geometry
in carrier-sensing threshold manipulation. Every access point tunes the carrier-sensing
threshold and transmission power based on its received power. They concluded that a linear
increase in the carrier-sensing threshold with respect to the received power maximizes the
throughput. Kiryanov et al. [126] extended [127] to reduce memory usage and converge
faster, which applied a branch-and-bound method to optimize the transmission power and
scheduling. The utility function is a function of the thermal noise, transmission power, and
channel gain, i.e., a factor of sent and received signals and noises that includes the effects
of path loss, shadowing, and fading. They tried to find the right value for the carrier-sense
threshold. A dynamic resource scheduling regularly runs the mechanism to consider prior
radio resources per user for optimal resource allocation.
Wilhelmi et al. [128] aimed to reduce interference and improve SR with a dynamic
channel allocation and by controlling the transmission power, respectively. They applied
multi-armed bandits to find the optimal combination of transmission power and channel
to enhance throughput. Bardou et al. [129] also adopted a multi-armed bandit approach
for the same objective. They proposed a Gaussian mixture to sample new network configu-
rations and computed a reward to avoid starvation to select the best configuration. NS-3
simulations validated the model.
Some papers aimed to compute the OBSS PD value efficiently. The authors of [130]
exploited the RSSI of the beacon to directly compute the OBSS PD threshold. The transmis-
sion power is calculated by subtracting a value from a beacon’s RSSI. A station close to the
access point will use a large OBSS PD value. Selinis et al. [131] proposed a Control OBSS PD
Sensitivity Threshold (COST) algorithm. First, the access point collects the moving average
of the stations’ RSSIs and the interference levels from all the stations. Then, it derives the
sensitivity threshold value to respect a minimum margin.
The OBSS PD value may directly affect the network throughput. Interference-Based
Dynamic Channel Access (IB-DCA) [132] maximized the aggregate throughput of the
WLAN. Each station keeps a record of the maximum RSSI level of all the overlapping
BSSs, i.e., BSSs with a different color. More precisely, it measures the maximum RSSI
separately for uplink and downlink transmissions. These values are advertised to other
stations periodically as well as the transmission power of the issuer. Thus, any station
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 27 of 52

can compute the expected RSSI level at the expected destination based on these values.
The station defines its SR flag accordingly; it knows it will not provoke any collisions
since the expected receiving RSSI will be sufficient to be robust against transmissions in
overlapping BSSs. As an extension, the authors of [133] focused on the performance of
each end-user in dense networks. Lanante et al. [134] proposed an analytical model to find
the suitable OBSS PD threshold and transmission power that optimizes the throughput.
They proved that the throughput depends on the interference range of the BSSs. The model
was based on the received power, transmission power, MCS, distance, and path loss. The
authors of [135] improved the aggregated throughput by tuning the OBSS PD threshold
and transmission power. They utilized the RSSIs of beacons and overlapping BSSs. The
former keeps the connection with the access point and the latter prevents interference in
overlapping BSSs. The threshold is computed based on the recorded RSSIs and uses an
exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) [136] for updating the threshold during
runtime. Lee et al. [137] proposed a link-aware SR algorithm to select the appropriate
links for simultaneous transmissions and the MCS without interfering with the ongoing
transmission. The mechanism tunes the transmission power for transmission protection
and applies EWMA to select the link and MCS that compute the achievable throughput.
A distributed OBSS PD mechanism was proposed to improve the fairness in the
network [138]. Taking into account the history of transmission opportunities, it tunes the
OBSS PD threshold. It prioritizes stations that did not access the medium in earlier time
slots and downgrades the other stations.

5.4.2. MAC Modifications

Kwon et al. [139,140] focused on the stations whose transmissions are blocked because
of multiple inter-NAVs sets. The station is idle for a wait threshold and then selects one of
the neighboring access points with a lower latency and a higher-quality transmission. It
then beamforms the data in that direction.
An interference-aware MAC queue in downlink transmissions was proposed in [141]
to handle the interference level caused by BSS coloring. The access point selects the packet
from the queue based on the interference severity, remaining transmission duration, and
fairness factor. The stations are classified into three categories based on their RSSI: short
distance, intermediate distance, and edge nodes. The access point selects the recipient
station depending on the inter-BSS RSSI strength.

5.4.3. Rate Control

The authors of [142] introduced two control mechanisms to improve the capacity
and network throughput. The first approach transfers low-transmission-rate stations of a
BSS to the cellular networks. The latter clusters BSSs with negligible mutual interference
together to maximize the throughput. Afterward, clusters apply round-robin scheduling in
uplink OFDMA.
Damysus [143] is a decentralized rate-control algorithm exploiting BSS coloring. It
adjusts the rate relying on packet loss ratio thresholds. Based on the loss ratio thresholds,
it tunes the rate, the OBSS PD threshold, and the transmission power with an approach
similar to the one in [131].

5.4.4. Performance Evaluation

Most of the evaluations were conducted with a network simulator. Shen et al. [144]
developed a simulator in NS-2 to evaluate the OBSS PD mechanism and throughput of
each BSS. They showed that the SR improves performance by 34%.
Selinis et al. [145] evaluated the Dynamic Sensitivity Control (DSC) and BSS coloring
mechanisms with NS-3 simulations. They observed that DSC improves the network
throughput and preserves fairness among the stations. Moreover, BSS coloring improves
the network performance if the number of Wi-Fi 6 stations is larger than legacy stations.
Selinis et al. [146] analyzed dynamic sensitivity control and BSS coloring with the same
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 28 of 52

simulator while the network was modeled by the capture effect model. They highlighted
that the throughput improves with larger frame sizes, whereas the high data rate and large
frame size negatively affect the throughput. SR’s throughput was analyzed in [147] in NS-3.
They reached the conclusion that SR performance depends on the CCA threshold, power,
and the distance between the BSSs.
Wilhelmi et al. [148] evaluated the SR mechanisms with the Komondor simulator.
They considered up to 400 scenarios by varying the number of stations, topology, OBSS PD
threshold, and traffic load. Its efficiency is measured by throughput, delay, and channel
occupancy. By alleviating the inter-neighbor WLAN’ contentions successfully, SR reveals
its significance in high-density and high-load networks.
The authors of [21] evaluated the BSS color efficiency also with NS-3. They proved
that BSS coloring increases the throughput per access point up to 47%. Šepić et al. [149]
mainly focused on BSS color. Seven BSSs were simulated with 70 stations and various
threshold values were applied to find the optimal value. They concluded that up to a
certain value, the throughput increases and thereafter the performance degrades because
of the interference from other BSSs.
Rodrigues et al. [150] investigated the impact of the PSR! (PSR!) feature on transmis-
sion latency using a testbed. The evaluations revealed that this feature could reduce the
latency considerably in worst-case scenarios and enhance the throughput.

6. TWT in Wi-Fi 6
We first explain the challenges for power saving with legacy Wi-Fi. Then, we present
the TWT mechanism and other power management improvements in Wi-Fi 6. Finally, we
review the related works in the context of power management.

6.1. Challenges with Power Saving in Legacy Wi-Fi

Although the PSM mechanism (see Section 2.2.3) saves energy, stations must wake up
regularly to receive beacons (more precisely, one beacon at every DTIM interval). Moreover,
stations with a pending packet must stay awake until they have sent it. If a station has
multiple packets to send, it cannot sleep until its buffer is empty. These limits affect the
energy consumption [22].

6.2. Target Wake Time (TWT) Mechanism in Wi-Fi 6

We first give an overview of TWT and then explain its basic operation, agreements,
and operation modes.

6.2.1. Overview
The TWT was introduced in 802.11ah [23]. It has been adopted by Wi-Fi 6 to reduce
energy consumption and solve contention issues. TWT aims to introduce a deterministic
and collision-free wireless network. It reduces the latency and queue occupancy by utilizing
multi-user transmissions and packet aggregation. In addition, the idle time of the stations
increases, which considerably reduces energy consumption [13]. TheTWT balances the
load with different TWT sessions for different stations. It also decreases the medium
access contention by frame exchanges in advance. The standard does not specify a default
scheduling for the TWT and is manufacturer-specific.

6.2.2. Basic Operation

The stations negotiate their communication needs with the access point. The access
point then acts as a central controller and schedules activity and inactivity periods for
stations during which they may transmit/receive or sleep. These times are called service
periods (SPs) and wake intervals. The SPs are also denoted as TWT sessions. Wake
intervals can be longer than beacon intervals, which solves the first problem mentioned
in Section 6.1. The stations with data to send can sleep until the next SP, which solves the
second mentioned problem. Moreover, assigning the SPs to the stations greatly reduces
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 29 of 52

contention issues within a BSS. Within the SPs, the stations can exchange data and control
packets. If a station has more urgent data to send, it can also transmit data during the wake
intervals using the normal DCF procedure.
The negotiations define the duration of the SPs (TWT duration), which are multiples
of either 256 µs or 1024 µs, and the duration of the wake intervals. A TWT channel is a
temporary channel, e.g., an RU that a station can use as the primary channel. Finally, TWT
protection is defined to protect an SP from external transmissions. An example is the use of
RTS/CTS at the beginning of an SP.

6.2.3. Agreements
Negotiation results are so-called TWT agreements. A station can have up to eight
agreements with its access point [5]. This is useful to cover traffic from different applications
with distinct agreements. Individual agreements assign resources to an individual station,
whereas broadcast agreements assign resources to a group of stations.

Individual Agreements
Individual agreements are negotiated between a single station and its access point.
Both can cancel the agreement. Figure 14a illustrates the use of an individual agreement.
For the negotiation, the station sends a TWT request and the access point replies with a
TWT response. The schedule is defined by the TWT parameters that are provided within
the next beacon frame. The station must be awake to receive this beacon frame but it can
sleep as soon as the TWT schedule is decoded from the beacon. The station is awake within
the SPs to transmit or receive frames to or from its access point. This procedure may repeat
for a longer time than a beacon interval depending on the agreement or terminate within
the same beacon interval.
Negotiation
Beacon Interval Beacon Interval
TWT resp.

Beacon

Beacon

Beacon
Data Data Data Data
AP
TWT req.

Ack Ack Ack Ack

STA

Awake Sleep Awake Sleep Awake Sleep Awake Sleep Awake Sleep Awake Sleep
(SP) (Wake interval)

(a)
Negotiation
Listen Interval
Beacon Interval Beacon Interval
TWT resp.

Target Target
Beacon Beacon
Next Target Beacon Beacon Trigger MBA MBA Beacon
AP Trigger
TWT req.

RU 1 Data
RU 2 Data
STA1
TWT req.

RU 1 Data
sleeping
STA2

TWT Params SP SP TWT Params

propagation propagation
TWT independent
data transmission
by other STAs

(b)
Figure 14. Individual and broadcast TWT agreements. (a) Implicit, non-trigger-enabled, and unan-
nounced individual agreement. Three Service Periods (SPs) are scheduled periodically within one
beacon interval. (b) Trigger-enabled, unannounced broadcast agreement. Two SPs are scheduled on
two different listen intervals.

Broadcast Agreements
Wi-Fi 6 has enhanced the original TWT mechanism to also consider broadcast agree-
ments. A broadcast TWT corresponds to an SP for a group of stations. These agreements
avoid duplicating broadcast or multicast packets that have to be delivered to several
stations. Indeed, all the stations have to stay awake to receive broadcast frames.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 30 of 52

In contrast to the individual agreements, the parameters for the TWT sessions are not
provided in normal beacon frames but in so-called target beacons. After having transmitted
their request, the corresponding stations can sleep until the next target beacon. Target
beacons are sent periodically every listen interval and contain the schedule for all the TWT
sessions. A listen interval may contain multiple SPs corresponding to different groups of
stations. The stations participating in the TWT agreements must wake up for the target
beacons as there might be updates for the parameters.
Figure 14b illustrates the operation with a broadcast agreement. All the stations can
send their requests to their access point just after the beacon. Thus, the access point collects
the TWT requests and sends a TWT response, announcing when the next target beacon
will be transmitted. All the stations decode it and can sleep until the next target beacon.
The stations decode the different SPs assigned by the access point in the target beacon.
Then, they have to wake up for the service period (SP) they have been assigned to. Here,
both stations 1 and 2 participate in the first SP, whereas only station 1 is involved in the
second one.

6.2.4. TWT Operation Modes

There are multiple modes for TWT agreements, which we exemplify in the follow-
ing subsections.

Implicit vs. Explicit Mode

The service periods (SPs) in this agreement can be implicit or explicit, which are also
called periodic or aperiodic. In the implicit agreement, the successor SPs apply the same
parameters as the first SP [5]. Explicit agreements require a new set of TWT parameters for
the next SP.

Announced vs. Unannounced Mode

In announced mode, a station indicates to the access point that it is ready to receive
buffered data. Only then does the access point send data to the station. Conversely, in
unannounced mode, the access point assumes that the corresponding stations are awake in
the SPs and immediately sends data to them. Announced mode is more efficient for saving
energy when a station has a very small amount of frames to receive.

Trigger-Enabled vs. Non-Trigger-Enabled Mode

In trigger-enabled mode, the access point sends a TF at the beginning of an SP and
schedules the transmissions for the stations participating in this TWT session. Thus, it
limits the number of collisions. In non-trigger-enabled mode, the stations decide when to
start the transmission without any negotiation with the access point.

6.2.5. Multi-User TWT

TWT leverages the multi-user feature of OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 to maximize efficiency. The
multi-user operation mode reduces the overhead of the control packet and makes packet
aggregation viable [13]. The access point may assign different RUs to the stations in an
SP. Multiple stations wake up synchronously within one SP and the BSS can multiplex the
transmissions over different RUs. Thereby, the access point maximizes energy efficiency by
limiting idle listening without impacting network capacity. Moreover, multiple Target Wake
Times (TWTs) may be scheduled in parallel on different RUs in a single TXOP, providing
more freedom in scheduling.

6.3. Additional Improvements

Access points of overlapping BSSs may cooperate to avoid collisions. Typically, they
may allocate different RUs within their BSSs or they may schedule SPs sequentially.
A station participating in a TWT session should stay awake during SPs. With Intra-
PPDU Power Save, a station can temporarily sleep within an SP if it receives a frame from
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 31 of 52

the same BSS and if this frame is not relevant to it. This means that the station sets its NAV
timer, turns to sleep mode, and wakes up only at the end of the current PPDU [5,111].
Opportunistic Power Save (OPS) removes the obligation to negotiate the SPs, combin-
ing the classic PSM and the novel TWT broadcast agreements [5]. It divides the beacon
interval into sub-intervals. The access point schedules a broadcast SP in every sub-interval
and tells certain stations to stay awake and transmit or receive data. The system does not
need explicit negotiations; the schedule is propagated by a traffic indication map frame at
the beginning of every broadcast SP. The stations receive this frame and if they have no
activity in the current SP, they turn to sleep mode until the next SP. Thus, OPS reduces the
overheads of the SPs’ negotiations, which may be costly in dense networks. In addition,
the access point assigns different stations to independent sub-intervals, making the system
more efficient through load balancing [5].

6.4. Related Works

Proper scheduling of the stations and user distribution among the wake times are vital
in TWT. Here, we review the related works in terms of user distribution, clock drifts, and
traffic aware scheduling.

6.4.1. User Distribution

Distributing the stations to different TWT SPs helps to minimize the collision in the
network. Bai et al. [151] proposed an uplink OFDMA random access grouping scheme
by utilizing the TWT feature to minimize the collision rate in random access mode. The
objective was to maximize performance by optimizing the group size of the stations within
one TWT SP. Stations are distributed in different SPs and a random access process takes
place in each of them. If too many stations compete, they will create collisions. Conversely, a
small group may reduce network capacity, the transmissions being inefficiently multiplexed.
The adaptive algorithm considered lower and upper bound grouping sizes and group
stations to achieve the highest system efficiency.
The authors of [152,153] planned random access uplink scheduling to minimize con-
tention and, thereby, power consumption. The access point accepts or rejects the TWT
requests using a mathematical model based on the number of stations, the RUs, and
the listen intervals. In particular, stations that wake up at the same time would collide.
Therefore, the access point will schedule them in separated TWT sessions to reduce the
collision probability.
Chen et al. [154] avoided collisions by limiting the number of selected stations to wake
up in every target beacon close to the number of available RUs. They derived a throughput
optimization problem with delay and instant throughput constraints. They solved the
problem using a genetic algorithm and the outcome was the optimal listen interval schedule
for TWT broadcast agreements.
The authors of [155] applied max-rate and proportional fairness scheduling to the TWT
mechanism in order to maximize throughput, save energy, and improve fairness. Max-rate
scheduling divides the nodes into two groups and assigns them to two timeslots within
an SP. Proportional fairness scheduling selects the appropriate station at the beginning of
each timeslot.

6.4.2. Clock Drifts

The clock drift impact on scheduling is a major problem with TWT [156]. Since a
station can sleep for a long time, time errors due to clock drifts accumulate, and the TWT
sessions have to be carefully scheduled to avoid collisions. In trigger-enabled mode, a
station must wake up before the expected trigger frame arrival, i.e., twice the maximum
clock drift. Alternatively, the TWT sessions should be sufficiently inter-spaced to deal with
the longest clock drift.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 32 of 52

6.4.3. Traffic Aware Scheduling

The following works focused on saving energy. A pending notification scheme for
uplink multi-user transmissions was introduced in [157]. A flag is added in the frame
header to notify the access point that more frames need to be transmitted. Thus, an
access point can automatically allocate more transmission opportunities to the station
with pending frames without needing an explicit and costly renegotiation. This method is
particularly efficient for bursty traffic. Karaca et al. [158] utilized multi-user scheduling and
an individual TWT agreement to save energy. They formulated a stochastic optimization
problem considering the traffic status of the stations. Then, they applied the Lyapunov
optimization function and concluded that high energy saving is achievable by larger
average queuing delays. The solution to lower the average queue delay updates the TWT
intervals more frequently, which causes more signaling overheads.
Some works considered the traffic to tune the wake times of the stations. The authors
of [159] considered joint multi-user scheduling and a TWT interval assignment as a stochas-
tic optimization problem. They took into account the load of every station and solved
it using a Lyapunov optimization framework. The suggested mechanism dynamically
assigns the TWT intervals to stations regarding the channel conditions and their traffic.
Qiu et al. [160] detected the traffic type using machine learning techniques. Then, they de-
termined the wake intervals for the stations by taking into account the runtime throughput
and expected latency for the specific traffic type.

7. Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO)

In this section, we describe MU MIMO technology in Wi-Fi 6 and review the re-
lated works.

7.1. MU MIMO in Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi 6 supports uplink and downlink MU MIMO. A combination of OFDMA and
MU MIMO is also possible. Downlink MU MIMO enables an access point to send data to
multiple stations at the same time. The new standard improves Wi-Fi 5 to support up to
eight downlink spatial streams. The access point can serve multiple stations that have fewer
antennas, e.g., an access point with eight antennas is capable of serving up to four stations
with two antennas. The access point periodically learns the target stations’ locations using
channel sounding and then directly beamforms the data toward the destination. It transmits
the data using the HE MU PPDU format (see Section 4.1.4).
Uplink MU MIMO is a newly added feature in Wi-Fi 6 to support high-bitrate appli-
cations and content streaming. It exploits MIMO systems to allow up to eight stations to
transmit frames simultaneously to the same access point. Similar to uplink OFDMA, the
access point initiates the transmission by a Trigger Frame (TF). Then, the stations transmit
data in the HE TB PPDU format (see Section 4.1.4).

7.2. Related Works

We review the related works concerning user selection, channel estimation, and
performance evaluation in MU MIMO.

7.2.1. User Selection

The access point must select the stations that can transmit simultaneously in UL MIMO.
MUSE [161] improved the throughput by selecting the most accurate set of transmitters in
the uplink. Primarily, the access point initiates an uplink OFDMA transmission and records
the Channel State Information (CSI) from each station. Regarding the obtained information,
the access point selects the optimal set of users for MU MIMO. MUSE proposed to use
EDCA to reduce the number of collisions when sending the CSI.
The authors of [162] applied reinforcement learning techniques for efficient MU MIMO
user selection. They considered a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controller in charge
of the learning process that monitors the network to reduce the volume of control packets
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 33 of 52

compared with a distributed monitoring process. The requests from stations are forwarded
to the controller, which decides how to allocate resources and configure the link parameters
dynamically depending on the load.
Oni et al. [163] formulated a throughput maximization problem in MIMO WLAN.
They mitigated the hidden node problem by optimizing the CCA threshold. Finally, they
maximized the average number of successful transmissions with respect to the density of
nodes, multi-antenna configuration, channel fading, and path loss.
Kim et al. [67] proposed a new MU MIMO frame format in both uplink and downlink
to maximize the transmission efficiency. They formulated the problem as NP-complete and
considered the status of the buffer and the bitrate of the stations. They solved the problem
to find the optimal length of the multi-user frame.

7.2.2. Channel Estimation

Estimating the wireless channel is especially important in MIMO. An access point
should minimize interference level among contending stations.
Hoefel [164] mitigated the carrier frequency offset (CFO) in an uplink MU MIMO that
causes inter-carrier interference and rotation of the constellation of the received symbols.
He first modeled the received signal for the OFDM uplink MU MIMO channel. Then, he
derived a minimum mean squared error for MU MIMO receivers to estimate the channel.
The results revealed that the frequency domain CFO estimation reimburses the relative
CFO effect in the uplink MU MIMO channels.
The same author [165] highlighted that the phase noise hardware impairment does not
degrade performance even when the received powers from different MIMO transmitters
differ. The in-phase and quadrature (IQ) imbalances have a much stronger impact. Due to
non-ideal hardware, modulators and demodulators may cause errors, possibly increasing
the Packet Error Rate (PER). In particular, the carrier frequency offset may have a non-
negligible impact for uplink MIMO [166]. Thus, the channel needs to be finely estimated to
mitigate both the amplitude and the phase imbalance.
In MIMO, beamforming has a strong impact on the PER; the transmitter must select
which signal to transmit for each of its antennas and for each subcarrier. Jeon et al. [167]
proposed adaptive feedback from the receiver to adjust the beamforming matrix. Na-
betani et al. [168] proposed a new channel sounding scheme, i.e., a technique to measure
the properties of the radio channel, particularly for the multipath effect, to improve the
throughput in downlink MU MIMO and reduce the overhead. Stations feed back the
compressed beamforming frames concurrently using uplink multiplexing. The access point
reduces the latency to collect the CSI and thus decreases the bandwidth consumption.
The authors of [169] proposed a deep learning model for a joint downlink MU MIMO
and MU OFDMA to improve throughput and reduce the channel-sounding overhead.
A deep neural network leverages uplink Channel State Informations (CSIs) to train for
the downlink transmission. They also considered resource allocation as a mixed-integer
nonlinear programming optimization problem. Then, they employed a deep neural network
to this problem for near-optimal resource allocation.
Zheng et al. [170] introduced a newPHY design for an asynchronous uplink MU
MIMO. The access point receives concurrent signals asynchronously from multiple stations.
While it is decoding a signal, it considers the other incoming signals as interference. It then
applies a spatial filter to recover this signal. This mechanism works properly for up to
four users.

7.2.3. Performance Evaluation

The authors of [171] observed the behavior of random access considering different MU
MIMO sizes and frame aggregations over different channel widths. They concluded that
the collision probability is lower with a large contention window. Fewer retransmissions
are required and it saves energy. The counterpart is a reduction of the network capacity
when the number of contending stations is insufficient to saturate the medium.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 34 of 52

Qu et al. [15] considered indoor/outdoor and single/multiple BSSs. The simulations

revealed that using MU MIMO increases the throughput in OFDMA. They concluded
that Wi-Fi 6 gains more when the bandwidth increases. Downlink transmissions also
impose a lower overhead than uplink transmissions. The authors of [102] developed a light
simulator to evaluate MU MIMO. Uplink MU MIMO performance improvement has an
inverse relationship with the number of contending stations. Therefore, transmitting data
in a scheduled manner avoids degrading the throughput.
Heo et al. [172] compared SU MIMO and MU MIMO in terms of latency and through-
put. They reported that MU MIMO improves the latency, throughput, and collision proba-
bility. They also expressed that MU MIMO improvements in WLAN are not as effective as
in cellular networks.
Hoefel [173] concluded that dynamic scheduling helps to improve the throughput. He
analyzed the channel sounding for uplink and downlink MU MIMO. The analysis included
the impact of in-phase and quadrature (IQ) imbalances, channel-sounding compression
modes with phase noise, and carrier frequency offset.

8. Modulation Techniques
This section introduces the new modulation schemes in Wi-Fi 6. Then, we elaborate
on other modulation improvements, namely, DCM and LDPC. Finally, we discuss the
related works.

8.1. Two New MCSs in Wi-Fi 6

The new modulation, 1024-QAM (10 bits per symbol), increases data rates by up to
25% compared with Wi-Fi 5. Wi-Fi 6 supports BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM, 256-QAM,
and 1024-QAM modulations [5]. The new MCS 10 and 11 with 1024-QAM modulation
operate with 3/4 and 5/6 coding rates, respectively. The selection of the right MCS heavily
depends on the channel quality that can be measured by the packet loss ratio, SNR, bit
error rate, transmission time, throughput, transmission statistics, or a combination of these
metrics. The higher the SNR, the higher the MCS index that could be applied, which results
in data rates of up to 9.6 Gb/s [5]. The nominal data rate can be formulated formally
as follows:
N · NSS · Nbits · CR
DataRate = subcarrier (2)
TP + TGI
where Nsubcarrier is the number of data subcarriers, NSS is the number of spatial streams,
Nbits is the number of bits per OFDM symbol, CR is the coding rate, TP is the OFDM
payload symbol duration, and TGI is the guard interval duration. Table 4 lists all available
MCS and their data rates for a single spatial stream.

8.2. Dual Carrier Modulation (DCM)

Dual Carrier Modulation (DCM) was first used in IEEE 802.11ad and aimed to improve
long-distance transmissions [174]. This modulation duplicates the same information on
two different subcarriers at two different channel frequencies separated far apart in terms
of frequency. The modulation in both subcarriers is similar. Therefore, it brings frequency
diversity for OFDM. On the receiver side, demodulation is performed by a Log Likelihood
Ratio (LLR) demapper that receives the two DCM symbols. It increases signal resiliency
and deals with narrow-band interference in Wi-Fi 6. Therefore, DCM is recommended for
MCS 0-4 [24].

8.3. Forward Error Correction (FEC)

Forward Error Correction (FEC) helps a receiver to detect and possibly correct trans-
mission errors. The source inserts redundancy in its transmission so that the receiver can
detect the erroneous symbols and ideally correct them. More precisely, convolution codes
encode m bits of information into an n bit symbol. Obviously, n is larger than m, and
a larger difference increases the robustness. Each MAC protocol data unit is processed
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 35 of 52

independently and a transmission failure means that the corresponding frame has to be
retransmitted entirely.
Binary Convolution Codes (BCC) and Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) are two
FECs used to reduce the probability of data loss in noisy channels. BCCs support up to
a 242-tone RU. Alternatively, LDPC is applicable in Wi-Fi 6 for MCS 10-11 and/or RU
sizes larger than 242-tone [175,176]. In other words, a BCC is mandatory for bandwidths
smaller than or equal to 20 MHz; otherwise, LDPC is used for larger bandwidths. Indeed,
a BCC is inefficient for large bandwidths, requiring more time to process data and more
encoders [177].

8.4. Related Works

In this section, we review the related works concerning MCS selection and perfor-
mance evaluation.

8.4.1. MCS Selection

An access point must select the most accurate MCS for each station. A higher MCS
means a larger throughput if the radio link is strong enough. Otherwise, the bit error rate
begins to dominate and will corrupt most of the frames. However, the standard does not
propose any mechanisms to select the most appropriate one.
Adame et al. [178] proposed a new path loss model for 5 GHz indoor environments.
They showed that when using low bandwidth and high transmission power for transmis-
sion, the access point gain increases by choosing a higher MCS. Moreover, as the RSSI
increases, the number of used spatial streams also increases. Krotov et al. [179] took into
account the interference and noise level. A station estimates the channel quality according
to the successful transmissions using a particle filter [180]. Then, with respect to the channel
quality, the station selects the best-fitted MCS to achieve higher reliability and performance.
Hussien et al. [181] proposed a deep learning approach to select the best MCS. Link
adaptation was modeled as a multi-label multi-class classification and predicted the perfor-
mance of the system for both the optimal MCS and suboptimal MCS. They applied a deep
convolutional neural network to predict the performance with a dataset generated with
Matlab. The loss function gives a larger penalty for false positives; the MCS should not
have been selected since it jeopardizes the reliability.
An access point may have precise knowledge of the CSI of each station and should
allocate an RU and MCS to each of them. This scenario corresponds to an optimization
problem. Ha et al. [182] proposed a mixed-integer nonlinear programming formulation to
maximize the total system throughput. They assumed that there was a specific Bit Error
Rate (BER) model per MCS. A station may also be attached to multiple access points, which
makes the link adaptation more challenging [183].

8.4.2. Performance Evaluation

Sharon et al. [184] compared the throughput of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5 over MCS 0–11 with
different MPDU sizes. They revealed that over small MCS, different MPDU sizes do not
affect the throughput. As the MCS index increases, the larger MPDU sizes provide higher
throughput. Moreover, Wi-Fi 6 outperforms Wi-Fi 5 by up to two times in throughput.
Sanchez et al. [185] deployed an IEEE 802.11g Wi-Fi network that comprised one station
and one access point. They compared these experimental measurements with simulations
using the default Wi-Fi 6 package available in NS-3 to quantify the effectiveness of the novel
MCS. More precisely, they emulated the wireless link from the station to the access point
using the delay measured in the real deployment. However, this paper did not explain the
implementation in detail, namely, thePHY model.
The authors of [186] evaluated the performance at the application layer in a testbed.
They revealed that Wi-Fi 6 provides better channel utilization and higher throughput than
Wi-Fi 5. This channel utilization was achieved thanks to the higher-order modulation rate
of 1024-QAM.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 36 of 52

The authors of [187] proposed a simulation model to measure the efficiency of all
modulation schemes. Afterward, they assessed different combinations of all GIs and
channel bandwidths to find the best values. They concluded that higher-order modulations
perform better on narrower RUs. Moreover, GIs do not significantly affect performance.
Some papers evaluated the throughput improvement. The authors of [21] compared
the novel MCS-11 with MCS-9 (Wi-Fi 5). The simulation highlighted that MCS-11 outper-
forms MCS-9 by 14-18%. Rochim et al. [188] also compared the same MCS. In particular,
they focused on the impact of the number of associated clients. They concluded that the
response time is similar. However, MCS-11 outperforms MCS-9 in overall throughput as
the network size increases. Weller et al. [106] evaluated 1024-QAM modulation in an ex-
periment using two different vendors. They measured that the new modulation improved
throughput by 25%.

9. Tools for Performance Evaluation of Wi-Fi 6

Many algorithms have been proposed to enhance the performance of Wi-Fi 6. Simula-
tors and testbeds are the two main tools used for evaluating the performance of the new
features in this standard. In this section, we detail the available evaluation tools.

9.1. Real-World Experiments

Testbeds allow us to capture complex situations that are difficult to model accurately.
Unfortunately, many vendors do not give complete control to the user to modify the
behavior of the standard, either because some features are implemented in hardware or
because of intellectual property issues. Therefore, real-world experimentation is restricted
and the Wi-Fi cards or access points must often be considered as blackboxes. Thus, the
performance of the standard can be measured but most of the standardized features have
to be unmodified.
We classify the real-world experiment tools into hardware and software. In the
following, we list the available products in these two categories.

9.1.1. Hardware
The Wi-Fi Alliance is the organization in charge of the certification of Wi-Fi standard
products. It has decided to release the implementations of Wi-Fi 6 features for access points
in two waves as listed in Table 7. However, some vendors include some features from Wave
2 in Wave 1. In addition, Wi-Fi 6 clients, including laptops, smartphones, etc., are gradually
released in the market.

Table 7. The two waves of Wi-Fi 6 access point features.

Waves Features

• UL/DL OFDMA
• DL MU-MIMO ( ≥ 4 spatial streams)
• TWT
Wave 1
• 20/40/80 MHz channel width on the 5 GHz band
• 1024-QAM
• WPA 3 Encryption (non-802.11ax feature)
• 160 MHz channel width on 5 GHz band
• UL MU-MIMO
Wave 2
• Combining OFDMA and MU-MIMO
• BSS coloring

Wi-Fi 6 products from different vendors may differ by their supported features and
their type of antenna, port, and radio-frequency connectors. The high-performance wireless
access points are mainly categorized according to their deployment environment, namely
indoor and outdoor.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 37 of 52

Many vendors are producing Wi-Fi 6 access points with various capabilities. Among
these vendors, Aruba, Cisco, and Huawei are the leading vendors that support most of
the features. These vendors release the hardware in different series with different levels
of capabilities. Aruba’s (https://www.arubanetworks.com/products/wireless/access-
points/, accessed on 1 September 2022) access point series meets most of the requirements
in Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6 E, namely, TWT, OFDMA with 37 RUs, MCS 0–11, and MU MIMO
with up to four antennas. Moreover, Cisco and Huawei products support OFDMA, TWT,
MCS 0–11, BSS coloring, and MU MIMO with up to eight antennas.

9.1.2. Software
Multiple Wi-Fi 6 features require that different access points cooperate. For instance,
sequentially scheduling the service periods with TWT, allocating orthogonal RUs for
different BSSs, or assigning BSS colors would benefit from a global cooperation scheme.
Thus, we are convinced that we need a common Application Programming Interface (API)
so that an external vendor-independent entity can adapt the behaviors of the different
access points. In this way, a controller may be able to control a heterogeneous set of Wi-Fi 6
access points. Researchers may also exploit this API to plug novel algorithms or evaluate
performance in complex deployments.
Wireless access points need a lightweight operating system to be executed on resource-
constrained hardware. OpenWrt (https://openwrt.org/, accessed on 1 September 2022)
is a well-known Linux operating system for managing network devices including access
points. It can be installed on any writable file system and provides more freedom for tuning
the default configurations from vendors. OpenWrt is open source and can be modified to
integrate novel software features.
The operating system is not sufficient since some Wi-Fi features are implemented in
the hardware. The firmware is a specific software installed in a small memory chip on
the hardware and is in charge of the communication between the operating system and
the NIC! (NIC!). It provides the instructions to control specific hardware. Open-source
firmware is beneficial for tuning some parameters. We identified three Linux firmwares:
ath11k (https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath11k, accessed on 1
September 2022): This firmware is designed for Qualcomm Technologies’ Wi-Fi 6
chipset. Its source code is freely available (https://github.com/kvalo/ath11k-firmware,
accessed on1 September 2022).
MT7915 (https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/tree/master/mt7915, accessed on 1
September 2022): This firmware is designed for the Mediatek MT7915 chipsets, which
consist of Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 combo chipsets. MT7915 supports the Wave 1+
features listed in Table 7 and mostly targets routers, repeaters, and mesh networking
equipment. It also supports EasyMesh features to create a meshed wireless topology
of access points.
MT7921 (https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/tree/master/mt7921, accessed on 1
September 2022): This firmware is designed for the Mediatek MT7921 chipsets and
mostly targets notebooks and routers. MT7921 supports Wi-Fi 6 with a 2 × 2 dual antenna.
However, the firmware provides often very limited access to Wi-Fi 6 features (or even
none for the non-open-source versions). Many features are implemented in the hardware
and can only be executed as a blackbox.

9.2. Software-Defined Radio (SDR)

Software-Defined Radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where signal process-
ing features are implemented in software.
An SDR system brings more flexibility in applying changes. It can operate in an
embedded system or a personal computer. However, it faces hardware limitations; in
particular, it creates restrictions on the signal bandwidth and the sampling frequency. Thus,
it is practically expensive and even challenging to exploit an SDR architecture for Wi-Fi 6,
which operates with very high bitrates. Finally, ultra-low-power devices are still better
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 38 of 52

implemented with dedicated hardware. Thus, it is hard to assess the energy efficiency of a
protocol or algorithm with SDR.
Openwifi is an open-source full-stack Wi-Fi based on SDR designed for Linux op-
erating systems [189]. The prototype is based on an FPGA and includes the software
drivers used with Linux. Both the hardware and software implementations are freely
available. It supports multiple different SDR platforms. Currently, Wi-Fi 6 features are
under development but openwifi does not yet support the high bitrate of Wi-Fi 6.
Xia et al. [190] implemented a cross-technology communication scheme between Wi-
Fi 6 and LoRa. They demonstrated the feasibility of their proposition by implementing a
prototype in the USRP N210 hardware. However, the focus was on implementing the LoRa
mechanisms and most Wi-Fi 6 features are not supported.

9.3. Simulation Tools

Network simulation tools mimic network behavior and allow researchers to make
changes in different components and layers. Although simulation results may differ from
the real world, simulators may be the only option for conducting research in the absence of
testbeds and open-source hardware.
Various simulators have been developed to evaluate the performance of different
Wi-Fi 6 features. The simulators are as follows and their supporting features are also listed
in Table 8:
• Official NS-3 [191,192]
• The University of Washington (UW NS-3) [193]
• NS-2 [194]
• Komondor [195]
• Matlab WLAN toolbox [196,197]
• Systems and Link-Level Integrated Simulation Platform (SLISP) [15]

Table 8. Simulation tools’ supporting features.

Features
MU OFDMA MU-MIMO SR Additional Language
Simulators
Features

round-robin scheduler
Official NS-3.35 X OBSS PD C++
for MU OFDMA
Python
MU EDCA

UL BSS coloring Spectrum C++

UW NS-3 DL
random access Two NAVs coexistence Python

NS-2 X X Channel bonding C++

Link adaptation TCL

DCF, MCS
Komondor OBSS PD [12] Channel bonding C++
Packet aggregation
RTS/CTS, NAV

Matlab WLAN toolbox DL OFDMA X HE format packets Matlab

PHY Abstraction

SLISP X X X 1024-QAM C++

10. Open Challenges with Wi-Fi 6

In this section, we discuss the open challenges with Wi-Fi 6 and provide an outlook on
the novel features of Wi-Fi 7.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 39 of 52

10.1. Challenges
We identified several challenges with Wi-Fi 6. These are the control of complex Wi-Fi 6
deployments, QoS support, and interoperability.

10.1.1. Control of Complex Wi-Fi 6 Deployments

Wi-Fi 6 has many parameters that impact performance. As highlighted in the previous
sections, many algorithms have been proposed to derive the optimal values according
to the environment (traffic, signal strength, density, etc.). A centralized controller-based
approach may help to collect statistics on the network and adapt accordingly the values of
the parameters [198].
A WLAN controller [199] monitors and manages a set of wireless access points. The
controller typically collects the channel quality from the access points to determine the
reservation parameters and the required channel time for transmissions to configure each
access point accordingly. In particular, it assigns channels to each access point to minimize
interference. It possibly assigns multiple channels to heavily-loaded access points (channel
bonding) to reduce the contentions in their BSSs. It may balance the load among the
different BSSs by assigning stations to the different access points. For instance, reducing the
transmission power of a heavily loaded access point may force some stations to hand off.
However, the controller has also to maintain a global coverture. Moreover, setting specific
OBSS_PDlevel values can give higher priority to the most loaded access point, which
increases its capacity compared to the neighboring BSSs. Additionally, a controller can help
to optimize energy efficiency [200] and fairness [201]. As an option, such a controller can
be executed in the cloud [202].
The authors of [203] extended the work in [204] and proposed an optimized centralized
control architecture to steer dense Wi-Fi networks. It focused on three objectives: flexibility
(SDN), scalability (optimization framework), and extensibility (unified control interface).
Each access point also has to select the most accurate MCS for each of its active
stations. Rate adaptation algorithms have been proposed in [205] for legacy Wi-Fi. The
rate increases or decreases if the packet loss rate exceeds or falls behind a threshold value.
However, the number of MCS is larger in Wi-Fi 6 and many parameters also impact
transmission reliability (MU MIMO, transmission power, etc.). Therefore, it is essential for
real deployments to investigate strategies for optimal MCS adaptation. This task can also
be supported by a WLAN controller.
As a result, the control of a Wi-Fi 6 network may yield a multi-criteria optimization
problem. Unfortunately, many parameters depend on the environment. For instance,
the efficiency of spectrum reuse depends on the location of interfering stations, making
optimization even more complex. Environmental models are needed for better Wi-Fi
control and must be validated by large-scale experimental studies. They can result in novel
controller algorithms for continuous optimization of large Wi-Fi deployments.

10.1.2. QoS Support

Resource assignment represents a key component of QoS support, typically to control
OFDMA and TWT. In addition, MU MIMO, spatial reuse, higher-order modulations, and
the novel 6 GHz band increase the capacity.
QoS guarantees and network slicing are crucial requirements in the industry. Flows
may be prioritized to expedite them relative to other flows. This was already possible in Wi-
Fi through EDCA. However, some wireline technologies, e.g., Time-Sensitive Networking
(TSN), which is based on ethernet, propose resource reservation for flows. As a result,
real-time guarantees can be granted, which is important for real-time applications. Zero-
queueing delay is achievable if resources are accurately reserved [206].
Network slicing has been proposed for 5G networks [207]. A slice is a logical network
with guaranteed transmission resources, i.e., the nodes assigned to that slice can utilize a
defined capacity. Wi-Fi 6 can support such slices to some extent by dedicating RUs or TWT
agreements to a set of nodes. However, slice isolation is challenging when multiple access
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 40 of 52

points can orchestrate overlapping BSSs [208,209]. Thus, when multiple access points
compete for channel access, the guarantees may not be met. Here, a controller can help
to coordinate all access points. However, in the presence of other non-controlled access
points, granting guarantees remains a challenge.
The synchronization of nodes is crucial in real-time networks such as TSN. The Wi-Fi
standard already supports time synchronization through the IEEE 802.11v/mc amend-
ments [208]. Researchers are designing Wi-Fi 7 to fulfill the resource reservation challenges
mentioned above and to make Wi-Fi compatible with TSN [210].
The “Reliable and Available Wireless” (RAW) working group in the IETF studies
wireless technologies for use in real-time environments such as Industry 4.0. These use
cases typically utilize current wireline technologies such as TSN that support soft and hard
real-time guarantees [211]. For both purposes, the RAW group studies various wireless
technologies and Wi-Fi 6 is among them.

10.1.3. Interoperability
There are many different Wi-Fi access points on the market as well as Wi-Fi NIC!s.
An implementation must conform with interoperability tests to be standard-compliant.
However, each vendor may implement additional proprietary algorithms, e.g., for time
measurement [212,213] or for the contention window distribution [214]. For this reason,
predicting the behavior of a multi-vendor Wi-Fi deployment is challenging.
More importantly, today’s firmwares are not open access; therefore, there is limited
control of the scheduling process, the MCS selection, or MU MIMO. Researchers need to ac-
cess the firmware and low-level features to identify the pathological situations and provide
algorithms or protocols to tackle the identified problems. Moreover, orchestrating a large
deployment from different vendors is difficult and the results would likely be suboptimal.
It is also essential to have a standardized API to control the behavior of the access point.
Ideally, the architecture should be sufficiently flexible to accommodate novel algorithms and
protocols to support novel features. Yap et al. [215] paved the way for network agility with
OpenRoads consisting of three layers (flow, slicing, and controller). Although this solution
focused on the SDN architecture, features to control the specific Wi-Fi 6 mechanisms would
be helpful.
Backward compatibility brings specific challenges. In particular, CSMA/CA is still
used by an access point to compete with other nodes to access the channel. A Wi-Fi 6
access point can receive the same amount of time as legacy Wi-Fi nodes, which significantly
reduces the bitrate and causes unfairness. This situation may be similar to the performance
anomaly problem in [216]. It can also cause collisions and long delays [86].
The main advantages of Wi-Fi networks are the implementation simplicity and lower
deployment costs. However, the implementation complexity increases with the new Wi-Fi
generations Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, which also increases costs. Their level of complexity is
approaching that of LTE networks.

10.2. Wi-Fi 7
Wi-Fi 7 is defined by the IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) amendment.
The IEEE 802.11be task group started in May 2019 and is expected to finalize it by 2024.
Since discussions are still in progress, the future feature set of Wi-Fi 7 is not yet definite.
Although Wi-Fi 6 operates on the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequency bands but only
on one of them at a time, Wi-Fi 7 can utilize them simultaneously [26,217–221]. The
specifications of Wi-Fi 7 are listed in Table 9. We elaborate on major candidate features in
the following subsections.
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 41 of 52

Table 9. PHY and MAC layer specifications for Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 7.

Standards 802.11n 802.11ac 802.11ax 802.11be

Features (Wi-Fi 4) (Wi-Fi 5) (Wi-Fi 6) (Wi-Fi 7)
Frequency band 2.4/5 5 2.4/5/6 2.4/5/6
(GHz)
PHY technology OFDM OFDM OFDM, OFDMA OFDM, OFDMA

Channel width (MHz) 20/40 20/40/80/160 20/40/80/80+80/160 20/40/80/80+80/160/

160+80/240/160+160/320
Resource Unit size Full channel Full channel 26, 52, 106, 242, 484 26, 52, 106, 242, 484, 996
(tones) bandwidth bandwidth 996, 2*996 2*996, 3*996
Max data subcarrier 64-QAM 256-QAM 1024-QAM 4096-QAM
modulation
Subcarrier spacing 312.5 312.5 78.125 78.125
(KHz)
Symbol duration (µs) 3.2 3.2 12.8 12.8
Guard interval (µs) 0.4, 0.8 0.4, 0.8 0.8, 1.6, 3.2 0.8, 1.6, 3.2

MU MIMO: DL, MU MIMO: UL & DL, MU MIMO: UL & DL,

MIMO technology MIMO
4 users 8 users 16 users
OFDMA: UL & DL OFDMA: UL & DL
Power saving PSM PSM TWT TWT

Coding BCC (mandatory) BCC (mandatory) BCC (mandatory) BCC (mandatory)

LDPC (optional) LDPC (optional) LDPC (mandatory) LDPC (mandatory)
Nominal data rate 0.6 6.93 9.6 40
(Gb/s)

10.2.1. Expanded Bandwidth

Since Wi-Fi 7 utilizes the 6 GHz band, it can operate on channels as wide as 320 MHz
(160 + 160), doubling the throughput compared to Wi-Fi 6. It also supports 80, 160, and
240 MHz channels. The 320 MHz and 240 MHz channels can be contiguous or non-
contiguous. The contiguous channels are in the 6 GHz band, whereas the non-contiguous
channels are split into two smaller channels in two different frequency bands.

10.2.2. Higher-Order Modulation

The modulation is expected to be 4096-QAM, which carries 12 bits per modulation
symbol. This improves the throughput of Wi-Fi 7 by 20% compared to 1024-QAM in Wi-Fi 6.
It provides a high transmission speed of 30 Gb/s per access point. This modulation is only
practical in combination with beamforming.

10.2.3. Multi-Link (Band) Data Transmission

A station can transmit or receive one data flow over multiple radio interfaces that can
operate on different frequency bands. This is suitable for extremely high data rates and low-
latency use cases. However, switching quickly from one band to another, handling multi-
link transmissions, and multiplexing packets across different bands are still open challenges.

10.2.4. Multi-Access Point Cooperation

To mitigate interference in overlapping BSSs, Wi-Fi 7 focuses on coordination between
BSSs regarding channel access, scheduling, and joint transmission of a single data flow.
Multi-access point coordination improves performance in two aspects: OFDMA and SR.
Coordination among access points with regard to OFDMA means that different access
points may assign the same RU to different stations if these stations do not interfere
with each other. Otherwise, they need to assign different RUs to them in order to avoid
interference. Coordination among access points with regard to SR means that access points
exchange CSI to adjust their transmission power; therefore, they can reuse the spectrum
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 42 of 52

more efficiently. This mechanism additionally provides modifications in coordinated

beamforming.

10.2.5. MU-MIMO
To double the nominal throughput, Wi-Fi 7 aims to use 16 spatial streams compared to
the 8 spatial streams in Wi-Fi 6. Doubling the spatial streams causes overheads on channel
sounding that may affect the accuracy of the CSI. Therefore, Wi-Fi 7 introduces an implicit
channel-sounding procedure to have the correct CSI.

11. Conclusions
In this paper, we first provided a brief introduction of Wi-Fi features to help non-
experts understand the content. Then, we provided an overview of the features of Wi-
Fi 6, which are OFDMA, Spatial Reuse, Target Wake Time, MU MIMO, more efficient
modulations, and the new 6 GHz band. These features increase transmission capacity,
allow for explicit resource assignment, facilitate resource sharing in dense networks, and
improve power saving, which is of particular interest in the IoT. Then, we explained these
mechanisms in detail and surveyed the related works, classified by their objectives. In
addition, we summarized the simulation tools used for the performance of Wi-Fi 6, which
helps the reader with the potential selection of an evaluation tool. We discussed the open
challenges in Wi-Fi 6, which are partly tackled by the current IEEE project on Wi-Fi 7.
Finally, we summarized the current directions of Wi-Fi 7.

Author Contributions: conceptualization, E.M., F.T. and M.M.; methodology, E.M., F.T. and M.M.;
validation, E.M. and F.T.; resources, M.M.; writing—original draft preparation, E.M.; writing—review
and editing, E.M., F.T. and M.M.; visualization, E.M.; supervision, F.T. and M.M.; All authors have
read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable as the study did not report any data.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:

AID Association Identifier

AIFS Arbitrary InterFrame Space
AP access point
API Application Programming Interface
BCC Binary Convolution Codes
BER Bit Error Rate
BSR Buffer Status Report
BSS Basic Service Set
CAPWAP Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points
CCA Clear Channel Assessment
CSI Channel State Information
CSMA/CA Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance
CTS Clear-To-Send
DCF Distributed Coordination Function
DCM Dual Carrier Modulation
DIFS Distributed Inter-Frame Space
DL downlink
DTIM Delivery Traffic Indication Map
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 43 of 52

EDCA Enhanced Distributed Channel Access

EIFS Extended Inter-Frame Space
FEC Forward Error Correction
FFT fast Fourier transform
GI guard interval
HCCA Controlled Channel Access
HCF Hybrid Coordination Function
HE High Efficiency
LDPC Low-Density Parity Check
MAC Medium Access Control
MCS Modulation and Coding Scheme
MEC Mobile Edge Computing
MIMO Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
MPDU MAC protocol data unit
MSBA Multi-Station Block Acknowledgment
MU multi-user
MU MIMO Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
MU OFDMA Multi-User Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
NIC Network Interface Controller
NEF Network Exposure Function
NFV Network Function Virtualization
NAV Network Allocation Vector
OBSS PD Overlapping Basic Service Set Packet Detect
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
PCF Point Coordination Function
PER Packet Error Rate
PPDU Physical Layer Protocol Data Unit
PSM Power-Saving Mode
PSR Parameterized Spatial Reuse
PHY Physical
QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
QoS Quality of Service
RSSI Received Signal Strength Indication
RTS Request-To-Send
RU Resource Unit
SDN Software-Defined Networking
SDR Software-Defined Radio
SIFS Short InterFrame Space
SLO Service-Level Objective
SNR Signal-to-Noise Ratio
SP service period
SR Spatial Reuse
SRG Spatial Reuse Group
STA station
SU single-user
SU MIMO Single-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
TF Trigger Frame
TF-R Trigger Frame Random
TB Trigger-Based
TIM Traffic Indication Map
TSN Time-Sensitive Networking
TWT Target Wake Time
TXOP Transmission Opportunity
defpluralTXOP Transmission Opportunities
UL uplink
UORA uplink OFDMA random access
WLAN Wireless Local Area Network
Future Internet 2022, 14, 293 44 of 52

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