Wi-Fi 6 Advanced

Author : Xia Zhou

 Copyright
Author: Xia Zhou
Key Contributors: Lei Zhang, Qiang Zhou, Yibo Wang, Tingting Dong
Release Date: 2022-08-15
Issue: 01

Copyright © Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 2022. All rights reserved.

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 Preface

Author Introduction
Xia Zhou: Serves as documentation engineer for Huawei wireless local area
network (WLAN) products. Since joining Huawei in 2010, Ms. Zhou has been
dedicated to documentation development for Huawei data center switches,
WLAN products, and campus network solutions. She has made significant
contributions to developing the book Enterprise Wireless Local Area Network
Architectures and Technologies .

About This Book

Going wireless is a crucial aspect of digital transformation for enterprises. Wi-Fi
6 is reshaping all industries and has already proven its value in workplaces and
more. As Wi-Fi becomes more and more popular and provides higher
performance, its application scenarios will expand significantly. Wi-Fi application
scenarios will no longer be limited to workplace scenarios, but will include
production and manufacturing industries such as manufacturing, mining, and
healthcare.

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Preface
This book starts by describing the service challenges faced by Wi-Fi networks in
production and manufacturing scenarios, and then highlights how Huawei's Wi-
Fi 6 Advanced technical framework and innovative technologies can help address
these challenges. In this book, you will also find the typical use cases of Wi-Fi 6
Advanced.

Intended Audience
This book is intended for information and communications technology (ICT)
practitioners, such as network engineers with a basic knowledge of Wi-Fi and
operation experience. It is also worth reading for anyone with Wi-Fi service
requirements or with a general interest in the next-generation Wi-Fi standard.

Symbol Conventions
Supplements important information in the main text. Note is
used to address information not related to personal injury, equipment damage,
and environment deterioration.

Indicates a low-risk hazard that, if not avoided, could result in

minor or moderate injury.

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Preface
 Table of Contents

Chapter 1 What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced? ...................................................................... 1

1.1 Wi-Fi 6 Development ........................................................................................... 1

1.2 What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced? ............................................................................... 2

1.3 What Makes Wi-Fi 6 Advanced Stand Out?............................................... 3

Chapter 2 Network-Wide Gigabit ............................................................................. 6

2.1 Wi-Fi 6E ..................................................................................................................... 6

2.2 Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antenna .................................................................... 10

2.3 CoSR.......................................................................................................................... 12

2.4 Fluent-MIMO......................................................................................................... 17

2.5 Intelligent Multimedia Scheduling ............................................................... 20

Chapter 3 Real-Time Intelligent Control ................................................................ 26

3.1 Lossless Roaming................................................................................................. 26

3.2 Dual Fed and Selective Receiving ................................................................. 31

3.3 Air Interface Slicing ............................................................................................ 34

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Table of Contents
Chapter 4 Harmonized IoT and Sensing................................................................. 40

4.1 SD-IoT ...................................................................................................................... 40

Chapter 5 AI Technologies........................................................................................ 44

5.1 3D Radio Calibration.......................................................................................... 44

5.2 AI Roaming ............................................................................................................ 48

Chapter 6 Typical Applications ................................................................................ 52

6.1 Manufacturing ...................................................................................................... 52

6.2 Mining ...................................................................................................................... 54

6.3 Healthcare .............................................................................................................. 56

A Acronyms and Abbreviations................................................................................ 58

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Table of Contents
 Chapter 1
What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?

Abstract
This chapter describes the challenges faced by Wi-Fi in production and
manufacturing scenarios and the advantages of Wi-Fi 6 Advanced in
these scenarios.

1.1 Wi-Fi 6 Development

Wi-Fi first emerged over 20 years ago, and is now used in almost every home
and workplace in the world. As shown in Figure 1-1, according to the Wi-Fi
Alliance report, the Wi-Fi market will reach US$3.3 trillion in 2021 before
increasing to US$4.9 trillion by 2025. The importance, applicability, and business
value of Wi-Fi are widely recognized in the industry. On top of that, Wi-Fi is the
primary mode of Internet access for a growing number of users. As more devices
are becoming wireless and smaller in size, Wi-Fi is gradually replacing wired.

Due to people's insatiable demand for premium Wi-Fi services, Wi-Fi 6 is

penetrating at a 50% faster pace than previous generations of Wi-Fi. With stand-
out features such as high performance, low latency, and wide connectivity, Wi-Fi
6 is perfectly suited to Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios. In particular, with the

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What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?
sudden influx of bandwidth-hungry and latency-sensitive applications related to
4K/8K video, IoT, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and metaverse, Wi-
Fi 6 solutions are set to be deployed at scale in homes and enterprises. This will
allow users to enjoy the benefits of Wi-Fi like never before.

Figure 1-1 Wi-Fi market forecast from year 2021 to 2025

1.2 What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?

Going wireless is a crucial aspect of digital transformation for enterprises. Wi-Fi
6 is reshaping all industries and has already proven its value in workplaces and
more. As Wi-Fi delivers higher and higher performance, it will be applied in ever-
more scenarios. Wi-Fi will no longer be limited to workplaces, but will expand its
reach into production and manufacturing industries such as manufacturing,
mining, and healthcare. This will place new requirements on Wi-Fi.

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What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?
Take manufacturing as an example. The application of Wi-Fi in the
manufacturing industry is completely different from that in the office. A typical
scenario is automated production, in which equipment such as robotic arms,
operates under the control of a unified server. This process requires high
reliability and low latency to guarantee real-time service data interaction.
Another example is Automated Optical Inspection (AOI). In this scenario, high-
definition photos of products are taken and then uploaded to the server for
automatic product quality inspection, a process that requires ultra-high
bandwidth. What's more, factories typically need to deploy an IoT solution for
real-time asset stocktaking. This poses the question: Is it possible to integrate
Wi-Fi and IoT services onto one network to reduce costs?

In response to this, Huawei launched the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced technical framework.

Based on Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6 Advanced proposes a series of innovative technologies,
such as Coordinated Spatial Reuse (CoSR), Fluent-MIMO, air interface slicing,
dual fed and selective receiving, and 3D radio calibration. It helps enterprises
build speedy, stable, and smart wireless networks, meeting the exacting
requirements of production and manufacturing. Wi-Fi 6 Advanced extends Wi-Fi
6 from office to production, enabling flexible production, unmanned plants, and
less-manned production lines. The same innovative technologies are applied to
the office scenario to further improve all-wireless office experience.

1.3 What Makes Wi-Fi 6 Advanced

Stand Out?
Wi-Fi 6 is known for its large capacity, low latency, and wide connectivity. Wi-Fi
6 Advanced goes further by placing artificial intelligence (AI) and security at the
core to take on three new characteristics: network-wide gigabit, real-time
intelligent control, and harmonized IoT and sensing, as shown in Figure 1-2.

Network-Wide Gigabit
Wi-Fi 6E is an enhanced version of Wi-Fi 6 that introduces the 6 GHz frequency
band that provides up to seven additional 160 MHz channels, empowering
Huawei's Wi-Fi 6E devices with gigabit speeds. To keep pace with Wi-Fi 6E,
Huawei released Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antennas that support the

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What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?
omnidirectional and high-density coverage modes, improving edge performance
by 20% when working in high-density coverage mode. Additionally, the
innovative CoSR technology can increase the downlink rate by 15%, while
another innovative technology Fluent-MIMO can increase the concurrency rate
by 20%.

Real-Time Intelligent Control

Huawei proposes three innovations air interface slicing, dual fed and selective
receiving, and lossless roaming, to provide ultra-high reliability and ultra-low
latency network assurance for real-time services. Air interface slicing can
provide ultra-high reliability and ultra-low latency of 99.999% @ 10 ms for
periodic services, providing deterministic experience. What's more, the innovative
dual fed and selective receiving technology provides 99.999% ultra-high
reliability by establishing redundant radio links. As for roaming, lossless
roaming technology ensures "zero" packet loss and roaming handover within
10 ms.

Harmonized IoT and Sensing

IoT in production systems is complex, and various subsystems cannot
communicate with each other. Huawei launches the Wi-Fi and IoT convergence
solution. This solution uses built-in IoT slots, external IoT USB ports, and built-in
IoT chips to expand IoT capabilities of APs. It also supports IoT protocols such as
Bluetooth, radio frequency identification (RFID), and ZigBee. In addition, some
AirEngine Wi-Fi 6 APs support Software-Defined IoT (SD-IoT). The built-in
container provides diversified open interfaces, allowing for on-demand expansion
of third-party applications. This enables detection for IoT terminal status at the
edge and timely data processing.

AI Technologies
Wi-Fi 6 Advanced widely applies AI capabilities to Wi-Fi technologies. For
example, Huawei launches intelligent radio calibration, which can analyze
historical network quality based on Big Data to implement predictive calibration
on the entire network, improving network performance by more than 50%.
Traditional radio calibration focuses only on APs but ignores actual terminal
experience, achieving poor calibration results. To address this, Huawei launched

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What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?
3D radio calibration that centers on terminal experience to achieve AI-based 3D
scenario identification AI and network-wide calibration, improving network
performance by more than 20%. AI roaming is another typical application of AI
in the WLAN field. This technology replaces the traditional STA-initiated roaming
mode with network-steered roaming. The AI algorithm is used to customize
differentiated proactive steering policies for each terminal. The terminals are
steered to the optimal AP at the optimal time, increasing the roaming terminal
speed by 30% and the roaming success rate by 70%.

Figure 1-2 Technical architecture of Wi-Fi 6 Advanced

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What Is Wi-Fi 6 Advanced?
 Chapter 2
Network-Wide Gigabit

Abstract
This chapter describes the technical advantages of Wi-Fi 6 Advanced,
including Wi-Fi 6E, Dynamic Zoom Smart Antenna, CoSR, Fluent-MIMO,
and intelligent multimedia scheduling.

2.1 Wi-Fi 6E
Looking into the next decade of Wi-Fi technology development, the Wi-Fi
Alliance officially launched Wi-Fi 6E certification in January 2021. Wi-Fi 6
Extended (Wi-Fi 6E) is an enhanced version of Wi-Fi 6 and extends Wi-Fi 6 to the
6 GHz frequency band.

What Is the 6 GHz Frequency Band?

The 6 GHz frequency band provides contiguous spectrum blocks that are globally
unified, operating in the range of 5925 MHz to 7125 MHz, as shown in Figure 2-
1. The additional spectrum of 1200 MHz offers up to seven 160 MHz channels,

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Network-Wide Gigabit
fourteen 80 MHz channels, twenty-nine 40 MHz channels, or fifty-nine 20 MHz
channels.

Figure 2-1 6 GHz frequency band

The 6 GHz frequency band provides even more than spectrum resources than the
2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands provide. If we think of channel resources as
road lanes, then we can say the 6 GHz frequency band widens the lanes, as
shown in Figure 2-2. As a result, the 6 GHz frequency band can bring higher
concurrency, higher bandwidth, and lower latency.

Figure 2-2 Channel resource comparison between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E

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Network-Wide Gigabit
By 2022, the 6 GHz frequency band has been made available for Wi-Fi 6E in
some countries, including Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala,
Honduras, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and United Arab Emirates, while
other countries are also actively formulating corresponding laws and regulations.

Huawei's Proprietary Technologies

The 5 GHz and 6 GHz frequency bands are only separated by 90 MHz. This
means that if 5 GHz and 6 GHz radios work concurrently, mutual interference is
highly likely to occur, as shown in Figure 2-3.

Figure 2-3 Wi-Fi frequency band resources

To help solve this, Huawei innovatively uses dedicated filter and antenna
technologies to implement narrowband filtering, thereby allowing 5 GHz and 6
GHz to work concurrently.

Additionally, Huawei devices enhance the modulation capability and support

4096-QAM @ 4x4 MU-MIMO.

As listed in Table 2-1, mobile phones (160 MHz, 2T2R) can enjoy a PHY rate of
up to 2.8 Gbps (1441 Mbps x 2) in ideal environments. The available rate can
reach about 2.2 Gbps, 20% higher than traditional Wi-Fi 6. This means an
average of about 10% higher gain on typical enterprise networks that use 40
MHz continuous networking. *

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 Table 2-1 PHY rates with different MCSs

MCS Index Modulation Coding PHY Rate (160 MHz, 1T1R, Unit: Mbps)
Rate
0.8 µs GI 1.6 µs GI 3.2 µs GI

10 1024-QAM 3/4 1080.9 1020.8 918.8

11 5/6 1201.0 1134.2 1020.8

12 4096-QAM 3/4 1297 1225 1102.5

13 5/6 1441 1361 1225

* This technology is a Qualcomm proprietary technology and requires a mobile

phone equipped with a Qualcomm chip.

Advantages of Wi-Fi 6E
Larger continuous networking capacity and higher single-user data rate

As a new spectrum, 6 GHz realizes 80 MHz and 160 MHz continuous networking
and easily increases the single-user data rate to more than 1 Gbps. In particular,
the 5 GHz + 6 GHz continuous networking capacity increases two to three folds,
fully meeting the needs of large-capacity scenarios such as high-density
enterprise workplaces, AR/VR, and industrial AOI.

Lower latency

Conventional Wi-Fi devices support only the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency
bands, and as such cannot operate on 6 GHz channels. In contrast, Wi-Fi 6E
devices support the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequency bands. This means that
only Wi-Fi 6E devices run on the 6 GHz frequency band and therefore make the
most of the latest anti-interference technologies, such as orthogonal frequency
division multiple access (OFDMA) and Coordinated Spatial Reuse (CoSR). It is
estimated that the average round-trip time (RTT) is 5–10 ms for the network
running on 6 GHz. This ultra-low latency paves the way for real-time gaming,

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Network-Wide Gigabit
telepresence conferencing, and industrial automated guided vehicle
(AGV)/programmable logic controller (PLC) control.

Higher security

Only terminals that support Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) can
run on the 6 GHz frequency band. This avoids the need to consider WPA3/WPA2
compatibility — which is typical on the 5 GHz frequency band — that reduces
the overall network security level. As such, Wi-Fi 6E is a good fit for scenarios
with high security requirements, such as healthcare, industrial, and government.

2.2 Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antenna

High-density workplace scenarios are seeing growing adoption of high-
bandwidth services, such as video conferencing, live video broadcast, wireless
projection, and wireless desktop cloud. This poses higher requirements on
network capacity. Against this backdrop, the Wi-Fi frequency bandwidth urgently
needs to be increased from 20 MHz to 40 MHz. However, although 40 MHz
provides a larger theoretical bandwidth, it offers fewer channels, which greatly
increases interference between co-channel APs.

To address this, Huawei proposed an innovative approach that uses the anti-
interference capabilities of antennas to increase the isolation between co-
channel APs and improve their concurrency capabilities. This new antenna
technology is known as Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antenna technology, and is
already supported in some of Huawei's new products.

Each Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antenna can work in omnidirectional or high-density

mode.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Figure 2-4 Radiation pattern of Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antennas

In a high-density access scenario, a high number of STAs exist in loose proximity.

In this case, a Dynamic-Zoom smart antenna switches to the high-density mode.
The antenna radiation pattern is shown by a and the red lines in Figure 2-4. In
high-density mode, the signal coverage range shrinks and the antenna energy is
concentrated in the vertical direction, increasing the signal strength in the
coverage range while reducing the energy leakage and interference in other
areas. In scenarios where users are scattered and wide coverage is required, the
antenna can switch to the omnidirectional mode to expand the coverage range,
as shown by b and the green lines in Figure 2-4. Such functionality ensures an
improved user experience across a larger area.

In addition to adapting to the STA distribution, the omnidirectional and high-

density modes of Dynamic-Zoom smart antennas are dynamically switched
based on the spacing between APs. As shown in Figure 2-5, when the spacing
between APs becomes larger, the antennas automatically switch to the
omnidirectional mode to ensure that the coverage range remains sufficient. And
when the spacing between APs becomes smaller, the antennas automatically
switch to the high-density mode to reduce self-networking interference between
APs.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Figure 2-5 Working mode of Dynamic-Zoom Smart Antennas

2.3 CoSR
Why Do We Need CoSR?
To detect co-channel interference and avoid conflicts common in high-density
scenarios, Wi-Fi introduces the carrier sense multiple access with collision
avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism. The downside of this mechanism, however, is
that APs in close proximity operating on the same channel cannot communicate
with their respective STAs at the same time. For example, in Figure 2-6,

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Network-Wide Gigabit
communication between AP1 and STA1 cannot occur at the same time as
communication between AP2 and STA2, although the two communication
sessions are not related. As such, the conventional clear channel assessment
(CCA) used by CSMA/CA for channel detection is no longer able to meet the
communication requirements.

Figure 2-6 Co-channel interference

In Wi-Fi 6, the spatial reuse (SR) mechanism is implemented by setting two

thresholds for APs: signal detection (SD) thresholds for "my" BSS (MYBSS)
frames and for overlapping BSS (OBSS) frames, as shown in Figure 2-7. For
MYBSS frames, the threshold is set as low as possible to increase the coverage
and thereby ensure as few MYBSS frames as possible are lost. For OBSS frames,
the threshold is set as high as possible to reduce the coverage. A STA considers a
channel to be interference-free and open for communication, as long as the
signal received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is within the specified OBSS
threshold. That is, when AP1 is communicating with STA1, AP2 can still
communicate with STA2, thereby achieving the SR effect.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Figure 2-7 Implementation of the existing SR mechanism

According to the existing SR mechanism of Wi-Fi 6, AP2 determines its own

transmit power. The trouble is, information obtained by AP2 is limited. As a
result, the transmit power that it determines is inaccurate, which in turn affects
the data transmission of AP1.

In response, Huawei proposed an enhanced SR mode — CoSR.

CoSR Implementation
In CoSR, APs coordinate with one another to achieve the SR effect. Specifically,
the sharing AP precisely controls the transmit power of shared APs. This
eliminates interference from the shared APs to the sharing AP while increasing
the gain of the shared APs.

Based on this, we can see that the key to CoSR is coordinated scheduling. A
prerequisite of coordinated scheduling is coordinated scheduling measurement,
which enables APs to obtain information about other co-channel APs in a timely
manner.

Coordinated scheduling measurement

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Network-Wide Gigabit
An AP periodically measures the signal strength of uplink ACK frames from STAs
(both associated and non-associated) on the same channel. Then the AP
exchanges with co-channel neighboring APs measurement information about
STAs associated with the neighboring APs. As shown in Figure 2-8, AP1 measures
the signal strength of STA1 (associated STA) and STA2 (non-associated STA) on
the same channel at the same time, and synchronizes the signal strength of
STA2 to AP2. The same process applies to other co-channel neighboring APs
(AP3, in this example).

Figure 2-8 Coordinated scheduling measurement

In this phase, there is no sharing or shared AP. Coordinated scheduling

measurement is performed among all co-channel APs. Therefore, AP2 also
synchronizes the measured signal strength of STA1 to AP1. This information
synchronization process is important to the shared AP selection during
subsequent coordinated scheduling.

Determining the APs and STAs that participate in CoSR

The sharing AP needs to be determined first. The AP that preempts the transmit
opportunity (TXOP) on the air interface is defined as the sharing AP (AP1 in the
following figure, for example). The sharing AP first determines the STA to
communicate with in the local cell, which is the sharing STA. Then, the sharing
AP selects the shared AP. The selected shared AP should be as far away as
possible from the STAs associated with the sharing AP to maximize reuse
efficiency of the air interface.

This distance is determined based on the previous coordinated scheduling

measurement information.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Figure 2-9 APs and STAs that participate in CoSR

After the sharing and shared APs are determined, as shown in Figure 2-10, the
sharing AP first sends a coordination frame in the current transmit window to
instruct the shared AP to perform coordinated transmission. Additionally, the
sharing AP specifies the maximum transmit power of the shared AP to ensure
that the sharing and shared APs do not interfere with each other during data
transmission. Then, the sharing AP sends its own data frame. At this moment,
the shared AP selects a STA in its own cell as the shared STA according to the
coordination frame and sends a data frame to it. Specifically, the shared STA is
the STA that is closest to the shared AP and has the strongest signal. At this
point, the CoSR process is complete.

Figure 2-10 CoSR coordinated data transmission

Instead of the fixed implementation mechanism, CoSR adjusts the AP roles and
packet rate continuously to ensure the optimal coordinated transmission effect.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
If the transmission failure rate of the sharing AP is high, the system does not
allow it to function as the sharing AP. If the shared AP fails to send packets, the
system reduces the packet transmission rate slightly so that the next coordinated
transmission can succeed. If the next transmission succeeds, the system increases
the packet transmission rate slightly to achieve an optimal transmission effect.

2.4 Fluent-MIMO
In wireless systems before Wi-Fi 5, APs and users communicate with each other
in point-to-point mode. Also, APs can only communicate with one user at a time,
further decreasing the single-user rate. Figure 2-11 demonstrates the preceding
single-user transmission.

Figure 2-11 Single-user transmission

Wi-Fi 5 introduces the multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO)

technology to enable an AP to communicate with multiple users at a time.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Figure 2-12 Multi-user transmission in MU-MIMO

If we think of data transmission as vans delivering goods, we can say that Wi-Fi
4 allows only one van to deliver goods at any one time, while Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi
6 support multiple vans, as shown in Figure 2-12.

MU-MIMO, a core technology of Wi-Fi 6, plays an important role in improving

air interface capacity. Huawei goes beyond the standard MU-MIMO protocol to
develop an enhanced MU-MIMO feature — Fluent-MIMO — which provides
the following stand-out functions.

Precise MU Pairing
MU-MIMO uses open-loop pairing. With this function, users are randomly paired,
after which these pairings are fine-tuned based on the packet error ratio (PER)
of users in the group. If the PER requirements are met, the pairing continues. If
not, another user is selected. It goes without saying that such random user
pairing is not always the optimal choice. When multiple pieces of data are
transmitted on a multi-user channel, signals may cancel out each other when the
data is transmitted to the users.

The question is: Is there a better solution for selecting pairings?

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Figure 2-13 Standard MU-MIMO vs. Fluent-MIMO

In general, it is better to select STAs that are far away from each other and have
low user correlation. With this in mind, Huawei launched Fluent-MIMO, a multi-
user pairing algorithm derived from cellular technology. Based on channel
information reported by users, the algorithm can directly select users with the
best spatial isolation to avoid the randomness of open-loop pairing, as shown in
Figure 2-13. Transmit beamforming (TxBF) beams in the figure are calculated
based on the channel measurement result.

Enhanced MU Mobility
MU-MIMO is sensitive to environment disturbances. For example, when people
move around or the user posture changes, the channel changes accordingly,
affecting MU concurrent transmission. To address this, Huawei enhances MU
mobility to maximally eliminate the impact of environment disturbances and
improve algorithm robustness.

MU-MIMO periodically measures channels. If a disturbance occurs within a

detection period, the measurement result is not the most accurate. To handle
such disturbances, Huawei Fluent-MIMO provides the following optimizations:

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Network-Wide Gigabit
Triggered channel measurement

Building on the original periodic measurement mechanism, Huawei adds

triggered channel measurement. Specifically, as soon as the PER increases upon
consecutive error packets caused by disturbances, an additional channel
measurement process is triggered.

Mobility robustness weighting

In multi-user scenarios, the system allocates power and adjusts signal phases for
different antennas to ensure optimal transmission effects. This process is also
known as MU multi-antenna weighting. The weighting is calculated based on the
periodically measured channel information. Huawei's Fluent-MIMO makes
antenna beams target users more precisely by taking into account the channel
changes and positions of different users. In this manner, each beam targets a
specified user to reduce impact on other users.

Optimized rate selection

When the channel changes continuously, the channel measurement accuracy

falls over time. Compared with the original logic, the rate selection is more
aggressive when a new measurement result is used, achieving better
performance at a low PER. When an earlier measurement result is used, the rate
selection is more conservative, achieving a lower PER and more stable
performance.

2.5 Intelligent Multimedia Scheduling

On traditional Wi-Fi networks, quality of service (QoS) is controlled based on
enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) contention parameters. That is,
different random backoff parameters are configured for different services, and
their air interface preemption capabilities are adjusted to implement
differentiated scheduling of services. This approach, however, becomes inefficient
as services evolve, especially when multiple APs and complex mixed service flows
are deployed on a continuous office network. Worse yet, large-file upload and
download services preempt the bandwidth for multimedia services (such as voice
and video services), which degrades user experience. To address these pain
points in a range of scenarios (such as college dormitories and enterprise
offices), single-user rate limiting is typically configured to suppress heavy traffic

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Network-Wide Gigabit
and protect multimedia service experience. Such rate limiting, however, restricts
the maximum network capacity and compromises user experience.

Huawei takes a different approach by designing an intelligent multimedia

scheduling algorithm.

Based on QoS policies, services are classified into two types: (1) high-priority
multimedia services that need to be preferentially guaranteed, including voice
(VO) and video (VI) services, and (2) low-priority greedy services. Greedy
services, mainly referring to download services, have unlimited demand for
bandwidth and span long periods of time. With characteristics such as group
effects and timed triggering, greedy services create network pressure and affect
key services. Therefore, greedy services need to be marked as background
services (BK).

Huawei's intelligent multimedia scheduling algorithm first uses application

identification technology to distinguish services, and then monitors the latency
of multimedia services. If multimedia services are found to be affected based on
the congestion detection algorithm, the congestion judgment algorithm is
used to determine whether the congestion is caused by greedy services. If so, the
congestion scheduling algorithm is triggered to suppress the traffic of greedy
services. The intelligent multimedia scheduling algorithm eliminates the need for
rate limiting on the entire network and maximizes AP performance.

Application Identification
To implement traffic identification, Huawei enables Dynamic Flow Inspection
(DFI), a technology that identifies applications based on traffic behavior.
Applications vary in their data flow characteristics, including the packet length,
interval between packets, and uplink-downlink service ratio. As shown in Figure
2-14, voice service data is carried in densely and evenly distributed small packets;
download service data is carried in a small volume of uplink traffic but a large
volume of downlink traffic; web browsing service data is carried in interleaved
uplink and downlink traffic; and video service data is carried in multiple uplink
packets, multiple building blocks, and multiple downlink packets.

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 Figure 2-14 Typical traffic characteristics of different services

DFI records different service traffic characteristics into a database, which it

continuously updates through online learning. When identifying applications, DFI
analyzes the first N packets of a data flow, and then matches the traffic
characteristics of these packets with the database to distinguish multimedia
services and greedy services.

Unlike traditional packet-by-packet application identification methods, DFI does

not need to parse packet contents, so there is no need to identify encrypted
packets. In addition, DFI has strong service generalization and learning
capabilities, meeting requirements for long-term service evolution.

Congestion Detection Algorithm

For multimedia services, latency is the most important indicator of service
experience. Heavy latency has a direct impact on service experience. For
example, an instant messaging (IM) software vendor explains on its official
website that good voice conference service experience requires the RTT of less
than 150 ms. Excluding the processing latency of the service server and wired
network, we can easily conclude that the one-way latency of the Wi-Fi network

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should not exceed 50 ms. Otherwise, the voice conference experience is affected.
By monitoring the latency, the congestion detection algorithm can accurately
determine whether multimedia services are affected.

Congestion Judgment Algorithm

Once congestion occurs in multimedia services, the next step is to identify the
cause of congestion, which is called congestion judgment. As mentioned earlier,
greedy services preempt air interface bandwidth, affecting multimedia service
experience. Let's revisit our van delivery analogy. As shown in Figure 2-15, the
total number of air interface resources in a time slice can be thought of as the
capacity of a van, which is fixed. If the number of greedy services carried in the
van increases, multimedia services will invariably be impacted. In other words, if
multimedia services are affected on a fully loaded van, it can be inferred that the
congestion is caused by excessive greedy services.

Figure 2-15 Congestion judgment algorithm

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Network-Wide Gigabit
The channel utilization (CU) is used to determine whether a van is fully loaded.
Specifically, it is used to measure the transmit (Tx) CU and receive (Rx) CU
values of a local AP, as well as the CU values of co-channel neighboring APs. If a
CU value exceeds the threshold, it is considered that congestion is caused by
greedy traffic. There are three types of greedy traffic-caused congestion:
congestion caused by the downlink greedy traffic of the local AP, uplink greedy
traffic of the local AP, and greedy traffic of other APs.

Congestion Scheduling Algorithm

Based on the preceding three types of greedy traffic-caused congestion, we
divide the congestion scheduling algorithm into three parts: the downlink on
the local AP, the uplink on the local AP, and the uplink and downlink on
neighboring APs.

Downlink congestion control on the local AP

When the AP detects congestion caused by downlink greedy services, it reserves

some time resources for VI/VO services during scheduling, as shown in Figure 2-
16. The system queries queue information before each packet transmission
scheduling. If the total packet transmission time of the current VI/VO queue is
within the specified threshold, services in the VI/VO queue are preferentially
scheduled. If the specified threshold is exceeded, services are scheduled based on
the relative priority.

Figure 2-16 Downlink congestion control on the local AP

Uplink congestion control on the local AP

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Network-Wide Gigabit
TCP backpressure technology is used to suppress uplink greedy services. As
shown in Figure 2-17, when the AP detects congestion caused by downlink
greedy services, the AP sends a TCP ACK message to the STA and decreases the
receiver window (RWND). The STA then determines the volume of data to be
sent based on the congestion window (CWND), buffer, and RWND.

Figure 2-17 Uplink congestion control on the local AP

Uplink and downlink congestion control on neighboring APs

As the local AP and neighboring APs operate on the same channel, they need to
contend for channel resources to transmit data. This means that once a large
amount of greedy service traffic is generated on a neighboring AP, the local AP is
also affected. If congestion occurs but there are no greedy services in the uplink
and downlink of the local AP, it can be inferred that the congestion is caused by
greedy services on co-channel neighboring APs. The local AP broadcasts Beacon
frames to instruct neighboring co-channel APs to identify and control greedy
services. After receiving the broadcast frames, the neighboring APs start the self-
check and judgment for greedy services. When a neighboring AP finds that it
caused the congestion, it starts the corresponding uplink and downlink
congestion control algorithms. Similar to the preceding uplink and downlink
congestion control methods, TCP backpressure is used for uplink traffic, and time
slice reservation for multimedia services is used for downlink traffic.

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Network-Wide Gigabit
 Chapter 3
Real-Time Intelligent
Control

Abstract
This chapter describes the technical advantages of real-time intelligent
control in the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced technical framework, including lossless
roaming, dual fed and selective receiving, and air interface slicing.

3.1 Lossless Roaming

Wi-Fi eliminates the need for cables and enables STAs to move freely. A STA
may move from the coverage area of one AP to another, a process known as
roaming.

However, conventional roaming solutions encounter the following problems:

1. Since Wi-Fi was originally designed for the home, where typically only one
AP is deployed to cover several rooms, some terminal vendors tend to be

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
 conservative in their roaming features, and consequently prevent STAs from
roaming too readily.
2. When a STA proactively roams, it takes a long time to scan all the channels.
As a result, the target AP cannot be found, which leads to a longer handover.
3. Terminals are not overly constrained by Wi-Fi protocol standards. The
roaming process, threshold, and protocol support capabilities of various
terminals differ considerably due to protocol compatibility and software
implementation.

In industrial wireless scenarios, these problems are especially evident when many
types of mobile terminals are involved, such as AGVs in warehousing, personal
digital assistants (PDAs) in healthcare, and bridge cranes in manufacturing.
These mobile terminals usually move across the coverage areas of a few APs,
which triggers roaming. The network adapters on these mobile terminals are
outdated and suffer from many restrictions, such as a very low roaming
threshold, which leads to delayed roaming. Meanwhile, delayed neighbor
scanning may result in failing to find the optimal AP, in turn leading to roaming
disconnections or large latency.

In response to this, Huawei developed its lossless roaming algorithm which

implements a device-pipe synergy, designed for mobile terminals that move at
high speeds and require continuous roaming. This algorithm minimizes the in-
roaming packet loss rate, thereby eliminating roaming disconnections.

Key Technologies
The conventional roaming process is typically implemented through the
following steps:

1. Roaming triggering: After detecting that the downlink RSSI is lower than the
threshold, the STA triggers the channel scanning process.
2. Neighbor scanning: The STA discovers visible APs at its current position
through active or passive scanning and measures network information for
network selection.
3. Candidate AP selection: An AP is selected as the roaming target based on
the scanned AP information.
4. Roaming handover: A roaming mode that matches the network side is
selected based on the STA and network capabilities.

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
The lossless roaming algorithm uses the following key technologies:

Lossless scanning

The timeliness of roaming depends on the time taken for a STA to scan
neighboring APs. There are 13 channels on the 2.4 GHz frequency band and 25
channels on the 5 GHz frequency band (this varies depending on the country
code settings). If the scanning time of a single channel is 100 ms, the total
scanning time on 2.4 GHz is 1.3s, and 2.5s for 5 GHz. Such lengthy scanning
periods cause delays in the roaming handover and affect packet sending and
receiving.

The purpose of channel scanning is to obtain visible APs at the current position,
negating the need for full-channel scanning.

Lossless scanning technology takes advantage of the continuous networking

ability of APs. As shown in Figure 3-1, APs scan each other to discover the
channels used by neighboring APs. After that, the APs use the device-pipe
synergy* function to notify the STAs of a channel set — which usually contains
four to six channels — much fewer than that in the full channel set. During
roaming, STAs only need to scan the channels in the notified channel set, which
significantly shortens the scanning time to within 500 ms.

Figure 3-1 Lossless scanning

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
Device-pipe synergy requires the cooperation of AGVs (equipped with
customized network adapter) or Unionman's customer-premises equipment
(CPE).

As shown in Figure 3-2, before a channel is scanned, the STA instructs the AP to
stop sending downlink packets. During the process, the AP temporarily buffers
incoming packets. After channel scanning is complete, the STA instructs the AP
to resume sending packets. This ensures zero packet loss.

Figure 3-2 Buffering packets to be sent during lossless scanning

Efficient roaming

To ensure efficient roaming, the algorithm can be divided into two stages: the
generation of a roaming target AP list and the selection of an optimal AP for
roaming. The roaming target AP list is generated based on the historical
scanning results of a STA. The optimal target AP is determined using a roaming
opportunity judgment algorithm. Information about the optimal target AP is
delivered to the STA.

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
Before roaming, the STA instructs the WAC* to buffer packets. After the STA
successfully roams to the target AP, the WAC sends the buffered packets to the
new AP. In this way, the STA can roam to the optimal AP with improved quality,
which ensures service continuity, as shown in Figure 3-3.

Efficient roaming technology applies only to the tunnel forwarding mode, in

which all AP traffic passes through the WAC.

Figure 3-3 Efficient roaming

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
3.2 Dual Fed and Selective Receiving
In scenarios such as smart warehousing and interconnectivity in the healthcare
and industrial sectors, terminals (such as medical equipment and sensors) are
connected to wired networks and are monitored and managed in real time. Such
wired connections offer both reliability and stability. However, some of the
drawbacks of wired networks include: limited mobility of wired terminals,
complex cabling, and difficult O&M. In response to the aforementioned issues,
reconstructing the current network with Wi-Fi CPEs has become a common
solution, with many deployments currently in place. In this solution, a CPE is
mounted on a wired terminal, connecting the terminal and other co-deployed
terminals to the Wi-Fi network. Similar to a wireless network adapter, a CPE can
convert both Wi-Fi and wired signals, enabling wired terminals to access the Wi-
Fi network. In the above scenarios, services are highly sensitive to packet loss
and latency. To reduce the packet loss rate and latency, Huawei has introduced
dual fed and selective receiving, a link-level protection technology that works
over the air interface.

What Is Dual Fed and Selective Receiving?

Without dual fed and selective receiving, a CPE accesses the upper-layer network
through a single link. Data of terminals connected to the CPE is forwarded to an
AP through the CPE tunnel before being transparently transmitted to the upper-
layer server in direct or tunnel forwarding mode. After dual fed and selective
receiving is enabled, two concurrent data links are established between a CPE
and a WAC. The transmission end (WAC or CPE) duplicates the data and sends
two copies of the data over each of the two links (dual-fed process). The receiver
end (CPE or WAC) processes data that arrives earlier and discards the redundant
data that arrives later (selective-receiving process).

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
 Figure 3-4 Single-link transmission (left) vs. dual fed and selective receiving (right) in tunnel
forwarding mode

Figure 3-4 shows each of the dual-fed and selective-receiving links, which consist
of a CPE tunnel and a CAPWAP tunnel. The CPE must support two or more
radios on different frequency bands (for example, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). After
dual fed and selective receiving is enabled, the CPE associates its two radios with
the APs that have optimal signal strengths on the corresponding frequency
bands. This means that the two radios of the CPE do not necessarily associate
with the same AP. When different APs are associated, ensure that the two APs
associate with the same WAC.

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
CPE Roaming in a Dual-Fed and Selective-
Receiving Scenario
To ensure that the network is not interrupted during roaming, a CPE manages
the roaming handover of radio links. For example, if roaming occurs on one
radio link, roaming can be triggered on the other radio link only after the in-
progress roaming is complete. This ensures one stable link during roaming,
greatly enhancing data transmission reliability, as shown in Figure 3-5.

Figure 3-5 CPE roaming process in a dual-fed and selective-receiving scenario

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
3.3 Air Interface Slicing
Dual fed and selective receiving technology improves reliability by performing
redundant transmission on different radios. To further add to this, Huawei has
developed the air interface slicing function, which reserves scheduling protection
for multiple APs, as well as uplink and downlink air interface resources. As a
result, reliability is raised to a new level, fully meeting the ultra-low latency
requirements.

Air interface slicing provides bandwidth reservation and fixed latency capabilities
for specific services by highly reliable slicing queues, time synchronization
between APs, time domain slicing, and robust scheduling technologies. In
addition, interference visualization is used to quickly locate the impact of co-
channel AP interference.

High-Reliability Slicing Queue

Table 3-1 High-reliability slicing queue design

Queue ID IEEE 802.11 Queue Design Air Interface Slicing Queue Design

7 VO (voice) HR (high-reliability slicing)

6 VO (voice) HR (high-reliability slicing)

5 VI (video) VO (voice)

4 VI (video) VO (voice)

3 BE (best effort) VI (video)

2 BK (background service) BE (best effort)/BK (background service)

1 BK (background service) BE (best effort)/BK (background service)

0 BE (best effort) VI (video)

The air interface slicing feature redefines the priorities of air interface queues,
and places the HR queue at the position with the highest priority. In the new

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
queue design, the HR queue with the highest priority is reserved for high-
reliability services to ensure they are differentiated from other services.

Time Domain Slicing

As shown in Figure 3-6, AP1, AP2, and AP3 are three co-channel APs. Co-channel
interference exists between AP2 and AP1 and between AP2 and AP3, whereas no
co-channel interference exists between AP1 and AP3. (The three APs may not be
physically neighboring, and inter-frequency APs may exist in between.)

Figure 3-6 Co-channel interference

As shown in Figure 3-7, the entire network-level coordinated resource allocation

can be used to divide time-domain resources by period and reserve some time-
domain resources for specified APs. For example, group 1 {AP1, AP3} and group
2 {AP2} are allocated to two different time slices. When group 1 sends packets,
group 2 waits silently; and vice versa. The rest of the time, APs can freely
contend for resources. This prevents conflicts between co-channel APs and
improves the reliability of packet transmission. In addition, when resources are
periodically reserved, APs can provide a deterministic transmission delay.

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
 Figure 3-7 Coordinated resource allocation

Time Synchronization Between APs

Clock synchronization is critical for ensuring that co-channel APs do not conflict
with each other, due to time asynchronization during time domain slicing. Time
synchronization is implemented by calculating the time deviation by measuring
Beacon frames between APs.

Figure 3-8 shows time synchronization between two APs. During the

synchronization process, AP1 sends a Beacon frame at , and then AP2

receives the Beacon frame at and records the timestamp locally. The time
deviation between APs can be calculated using the following formula:

A Beacon frame sent at does not carry the timestamp , and AP1

sends another Beacon frame at , carrying the timestamp of the previous

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
frame. AP2 receives the frame at and parses the packet to obtain the

timestamp .

Figure 3-8 Time synchronization between APs

The actual synchronization process is more complex, involving channel delay

compensation, which is not mentioned here.

Figure 3-9 shows how a large-scale network utilizes clock synchronization. Out
of the entire network, one master AP is selected as the reference clock in the
same decision region, and performs clock synchronization hierarchically. The
master AP may be selected according to the network topology or positions of
APs. During clock synchronization, the master AP sends a Beacon frame to
broadcast its high-precision timestamp, SN, and layer (L0). All co-channel APs
within the coverage area of the master AP belong to layer (L1). APs at layer (L1)
use the information carried in the Beacon frame of the master AP to complete
time synchronization. As a relay, the APs at layer (L1) need to synchronize the
clock with the APs at the outer layer. The APs at layer 1 fill the timestamp, SN,

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
and layer (L1) of the master AP in the Beacon frames and broadcasts the frames.
The outer-layer APs (L2) can calculate their time differences with the master AP.
Other APs complete time synchronization layer by layer.

Figure 3-9 Clock synchronization on a large-scale network

Robust Scheduling
Wi-Fi packets are transmitted at a high rate over the air interface to obtain a
high throughput. However, a higher packet transmission rate and a higher
modulation and coding scheme (MCS) require a higher signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR). In other words, a higher packet transmission rate indicates inefficient
anti-interference capability. The high rate increases the possibility of
transmission failures, and the retransmission increases the delay.

Considering the small traffic volume of some applications, robust scheduling

reduces time delays through the following improvements:

 Low-speed MCS preference: Packets are transmitted at more stable rates to

improve transmission reliability.
 Increased transmit power: The transmit power of packets is increased so that
the peer device has sufficient SNR to correctly demodulate packets.
 Hardware retransmission: Hardware retransmission technology is used to
reduce the delay caused by packet retransmission.

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
Interference Visualization
As the network scale expands, traditional CCA and distributed coordination
function (DCF) mechanisms cannot meet the anti-interference requirements
between co-channel APs. As a result, problems such as hidden nodes, conflicts,
and long waiting times for air interface access occur, and will cause uncertain
network delays.

To resolve this, Huawei has developed a fast, efficient, and accurate interference
identification and visualization technology. The basic principles of this technology
are as follows:

1. On the basis of high-precision time synchronization between APs, the central

node collects the characteristics of received and sent packets (including the
packet sending direction, TID, timestamp, type, rate, delay, and number of
retransmission times) on the air interface of co-channel APs. The graphical
user interface (GUI) tool is used to draw an air interface fingerprint of
multiple APs to clearly show how multiple co-channel APs contend for air
interface resources, whether there is interference, and the interference
severity.
2. Based on interference identification, the system adjusts related air interface
parameters (such as power and EDCA) and performs closed-loop control. If
the loop cannot be closed, an alarm is generated to give a warning and air
interface interference information is retained, helping O&M personnel locate
the root cause and optimize the network.

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Real-Time Intelligent Control
 Chapter 4
Harmonized IoT and Sensing

Abstract
This chapter describes the technical advantages of harmonized IoT and
sensing in the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced technical framework, mainly including
SD-IoT.

4.1 SD-IoT
The global enterprise IoT market continues to grow at a blistering pace, with
many emerging smart industry players requiring IoT systems, such as healthcare,
education, and warehousing. Against this backdrop, network-level IoT solutions
have become a standard configuration, and IoT and Wi-Fi networks need to
coexist. To meet this requirement, Huawei launched IoT APs that enable IoT
connections, such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, and RFID, in addition to field-proven Wi-
Fi access. By deploying such IoT APs, Wi-Fi and IoT can be co-sited, sharing the
same power supply and backhaul links and achieving unified management. In
addition, IoT APs allow a flexible approach to IoT expansion.

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Harmonized IoT and Sensing
IoT Expansion Capabilities of APs
As shown in Figure 4-1, Huawei APs can expand IoT capabilities in the following
ways:

Multi-protocol IoT chip

The AP chips support mainstream 2.4 GHz short-range IoT protocols, such as
Bluetooth 5.0 and ZigBee. It also allows for customizations to further meet
specific IoT protocol interface and function requirements.

PCIe card slot

Some of Huawei's IoT APs come with a built-in PCIe card slot, where IoT cards
(including those from IoT vendors) can be installed securely and neatly. The IoT
APs offer power supply, transmission, and edge container capabilities for IoT
cards to simplify IoT deployment.

AP's USB port

Huawei IoT APs provide a USB port to connect external USB-type IoT modules
from IoT vendors. By offering power supply, transmission, and edge container
capabilities to external USB-type IoT modules, Huawei IoT APs greatly simplify
IoT deployment.

Figure 4-1 IoT expansion capabilities of APs

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Harmonized IoT and Sensing
Container Capabilities of APs
Huawei IoT APs enable flexible IoT expansion through hardware, and also offer
open container capabilities through software. These capabilities help IoT vendors
with E2E system integration and ensure security and fault isolation for Wi-Fi and
IoT services.

A container is a type of lightweight virtualization technology. Virtual machines

(VMs) require a complete virtualized operating system (including the CPU,
memory and disks) before they can be used just like physical machines. In
contrast, a container requires only a lightweight virtual environment that is
isolated from the host operating system.

Due to the limited resources in an embedded environment, Huawei APs use

Linux Container (LXC) technology that provides a set of container management
tools for users, helping to flexibly create and manage container image instances.
LXC also allows processes to run in a relatively independent space, and can easily
control resource scheduling for such processes, as shown in Figure 4-2.

Figure 4-2 WLAN AP container

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Harmonized IoT and Sensing
The built-in container of Huawei APs uses Debian, an open-source toolchain
environment, and therefore is independent of product toolchains. Vendors can
define third-party applications based on their service requirements, physical
forms of IoT cards, and interface protocols to implement edge computing
capabilities on APs.

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Harmonized IoT and Sensing
 Chapter 5
AI Technologies

Abstract
This chapter describes AI technologies applied in the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced
technical framework, including 3D radio calibration and AI roaming.

5.1 3D Radio Calibration

On a Wi-Fi network, the operating performance of APs is easily affected by the
radio environment. For example, a high-power AP can interfere with adjacent
APs if they work on overlapping channels. To ensure that all APs work in the
optimal state, the system needs to adjust the channels and power of the APs,
allocate non-overlapping channels to neighboring APs, and ensure that the
power of all APs is balanced.

The traditional radio calibration algorithm adjusts radio parameters based on the
attenuation of radio signals between APs. The distance between APs can be
inferred based on the signal attenuation, with a larger attenuation value
indicating a longer distance between APs. If an AP detects high signal
attenuation from surrounding APs, it increases the transmit power to enhance
coverage. Conversely, if the AP detects low signal attenuation from surrounding

44
AI Technologies
APs, it decreases the transmit power to avoid interference. In this way, APs
further away from each other are more likely to be adjusted to the same
working channel.

Actual deployments see even greater complexity. The traditional radio calibration
algorithm is based only on the detection of neighboring APs, which may cause
poor user experience. This can be illustrated using two typical scenarios.

Scenario 1: APs are installed high or blocked from STAs.

In this scenario, APs are installed at high positions or signals between APs and
STAs are blocked, as shown in Figure 5-1. In this case, the APs detect strong
signals from each other and reduce the transmit power according to the
traditional radio calibration algorithm. This, however, leads to issues such as
weak radio signals, low negotiated rate, and disconnection during roaming.

Figure 5-1 APs are installed high or blocked from STAs

Scenario 2: APs are blocked from each other.

APs are blocked from each other by obstacles. With the traditional algorithm, the
WAC considers the two APs to have no neighbor relationship due to large
attenuation, and therefore may allocate the same working channel to them
both. As a result, co-channel interference occurs on the STA side, as shown in
Figure 5-2.

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AI Technologies
 Figure 5-2 Blocking between APs

To address this, Huawei launches the 3D radio calibration algorithm. This

algorithm adds the STA experience to the original 2D topology, redefining it as a
3D (AP-STA-AP) measurement topology. Such STA experience – based radio
calibration better suits complex and ever-changing spatial environments.

Figure 5-3 3D measurement topology

The link measurement (LM) capability in the 802.11k standard is used to detect
STA experience.

46
AI Technologies
For scenario 1 (APs are installed high or blocked from STAs.)

Based on the LM result of a STA, the WAC can obtain the path losses between
the STA and associated AP and between the STA and neighboring APs. The WAC
then can increase the transmit power of APs during radio calibration to ensure
service experience of the STA, as shown in Figure 5-4.

Figure 5-4 Radio calibration algorithm when APs are installed high or blocked from STAs

For scenario 2 (APs are blocked from each other.)

Based on the LM result of a STA, the WAC can accurately identify the neighbor
relationship between the two APs and allocate different working channels to
them to ensure service experience on the STA side, as shown in Figure 5-5.

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AI Technologies
 Figure 5-5 Radio calibration when APs are blocked from each other

5.2 AI Roaming
As mentioned, conventional roaming solutions encounter the following
problems:

1. Since Wi-Fi was originally designed for the home, where typically only one
AP is deployed to cover several rooms, some terminal vendors tend to be
conservative in their roaming features, and consequently prevent STAs from
roaming too readily.
2. When a STA proactively roams, it takes a long time to scan all the channels.
As a result, the target AP cannot be found, which leads to a longer handover.
3. Terminals are not overly constrained by Wi-Fi protocol standards. The
roaming process, threshold, and protocol support capabilities of various
terminals differ considerably due to protocol compatibility and software
implementation.

Unlike lossless roaming that leverages device-pipe synergy to reduce in-roaming

packet loss, the AI roaming algorithm replaces STA-triggered roaming with
network-steered roaming, optimizes roaming handover opportunities, and
shortens the roaming time. For STAs, this algorithm provides personalized STA
profiles instead of using the same profile for all STAs. It supports the roaming

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AI Technologies
parameter settings for each type of STA, and minimizes the possible adverse
impacts of STAs' protocol compatibility and implementation differences.

STA Roaming Profile

We mentioned that the AI roaming algorithm implements personalized STA
profiles. How does it do this?

Huawei analyzed roaming behavior based on huge amounts of data samples,

and then tried out countless parameters for AI model training. Based on this,
STA profiles are generated, each based on a set of personalized steering policies.
These STA profiles form a STA profile library, as shown in Figure 5-6.

The profile content includes:

 Capabilities supported by the STA, including the steering protocol and

measurement protocol capabilities
 Conditions under which a STA can be steered and the minimum signal
strengths of the source and target APs
 Specific steering parameters

Figure 5-6 STA profile library

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AI Technologies
After a STA goes online, terminal identification technology is used to identify the
STA type. If a match is found in the STA profile library, its roaming parameters
are used for more accurate STA steering. If no match is found, the default
steering policy is used for the STA at this location. Additionally, steering process
information is used to generate a new STA profile for implementing automatic
online learning of STA profiles.

Steering Based on Coordinated Measurement

Unlike conventional roaming solutions, the AI roaming algorithm takes into
consideration the network's topology and profile information. This is known as
steering based on coordinated measurement, which achieves more efficient
measurement, quicker roaming, and higher roaming success rate.

After going online, the STA continuously performs LM with its associated AP,
mainly measuring RSSIs. Based on the changes in measurement results, the AP
determines whether the STA is moving away from it. If a STA is moving away
from the associated AP and its signal strength is lower than a specified
threshold, the AP immediately triggers coordinated measurement. Then,
neighboring APs also participate in coordinated measurement of the STA and
send the measurement results to the associated AP. As shown in Figure 5-7, the
associated AP generates a multi-AP coverage snapshot at the current position of
the STA, based on which it finds the optimal target AP. The associated AP then
uses the optimal steering solution based on the matching STA profile to ensure
that the STA follows the steering policy and thereby prevent it from going offline
unexpectedly.

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AI Technologies
Figure 5-7 Multi-AP coverage snapshot

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AI Technologies
 Chapter 6
Typical Applications

Abstract
This chapter describes the typical applications of Wi-Fi 6 Advanced in
production scenarios, such as production lines in the manufacturing
industry, mining in the energy industry, and IoT use cases in the
healthcare industry.

6.1 Manufacturing
A key part of smart manufacturing is making production lines fully wireless to
achieve flexible production. For example, a mobile phone manufacturing
enterprise has 300 production lines. To keep up with constantly evolving mobile
phone models, the enterprise has to change these production lines at least once
every quarter. Traditionally, production lines mainly used wired connections and
therefore had to be suspended for at least three days for each change. By
making production lines fully wireless, the suspension time of production lines
can be slashed to less than half a day. For our hypothetical mobile phone
enterprise, this equates to 12 million more mobile phones produced over the
course of a year. This is the value brought by wireless production lines.

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Typical Applications
The application of Wi-Fi in manufacturing differs greatly from that in enterprise
office, as shown in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1 Digital production lines

Devices such as robotic arms are PLC-controlled, thereby automating production.

When servers in the control system deliver task instructions and collect
information, ultra-high reliability is required for production services. Real-time
intelligent control in the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced technical framework can perfectly
meet these requirements for high reliability and low latency.

During Automatic Optic Inspection (AOI), industrial cameras are used to take HD
images of products and upload them to the servers, which then automatically
inspect product quality using AI. During the entire process, HD product images
need to be uploaded in real time. This is why ultra-large bandwidth is required.
In the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced architecture, Wi-Fi 6E APs and Wi-Fi 6E CPEs, combined

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Typical Applications
with CoSR technology, offer the network-wide gigabit wireless bandwidth
needed for AOI tasks on production lines.

In addition, Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are also used for transporting raw
materials and finished products. While AGVs are moving, they require zero
packet loss on the wireless network. The Wi-Fi 6 Advanced architecture includes
real-time intelligent control, which uses the lossless roaming technology to
ensure zero service interruption for AGVs during service scheduling. Meanwhile,
Wi-Fi and IoT convergence technology monitors material and product locations
in real time to achieve convenient and efficient management of materials and
products. Furthermore, Wi-Fi and IoT convergence halves the Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO).

In short, Wi-Fi 6 Advanced helps lead the manufacturing industry into the
flexible production era, enabling products with lower costs, higher efficiency, and
better quality.

6.2 Mining
Today, mines are undergoing digital transformation and evolving toward little-
staffed or even unstaffed. As mining excavation progresses, networks need to be
continually deployed to provide connectivity. This is why wireless is widely
recognized as the best network solution for mines. In mining scenarios, wireless
networks face new challenges from mobile services involved in mining machines,
cameras/sensors, inspection robots, and handheld devices, as shown in Figure 6-
2.

For example, mining machines can be remotely controlled by ground personnel

to improve mining safety and efficiency. The entire remote control process has
high requirements on the reliability and latency of the wireless network. This can
be achieved thanks to the real-time intelligent control in the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced
architecture, which uses technologies such as dual fed and selective receiving.
The technology offers link-level protection through dual radios, achieving high
reliability of 99.999% and ultra-low latency of 10 ms.

To improve mining safety, cameras and sensors are deployed in mines to

monitor the underground environment and production process. Masses of data
needs to be transmitted from cameras and sensors to the monitoring and

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Typical Applications
command center in real-time, which requires high concurrency capabilities of
wireless networks. In the Wi-Fi 6 Advanced architecture, the network-wide
gigabit technology uses technologies such as Wi-Fi 6E and Fluent-MIMO to
enable high concurrency for both cameras and sensors. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi and
IoT convergence technology facilitates unified access of various sensors, such as
gas density sensors, to the wireless network.

Inspection robots and handheld devices also require wireless network access and
high bandwidth. Inspection robots perform inspection in tunnels around the
clock to promptly detect potential safety risks. The handheld devices of miners
typically enable monitoring and communications services that also help improve
production efficiency and safety. However, the inspection robots and handheld
devices are always moving, during which time the wireless networks need to
continue delivering uninterrupted services. The real-time intelligent control in the
Wi-Fi 6 Advanced architecture uses the lossless roaming technology and all-
wireless network to cover the mines. In this way, the monitoring data can be
transmitted from inspection robots and handheld devices to the monitoring and
command center in a timely and lossless manner, ensuring the safety of the
entire mine and all miners.

In this way, Wi-Fi 6 Advanced helps achieve little-staffed and even unstaffed
mining operations and ensure mining safety with lower costs and higher
efficiency.

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Typical Applications
 Figure 6-2 Little-staffed mines

6.3 Healthcare
The healthcare system is also undergoing digital transformation. A challenge for
hospitals is how to free healthcare personnel from repetitive, mundane, and
time-consuming work, and instead allow them to focus on core work, improve
patients' medical experience, and facilitate hospital management and decision-
making, as shown in Figure 6-3.

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Typical Applications
 Figure 6-3 Wireless healthcare

Large medical devices: Computerized Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance

Imaging (MRI), and Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) all require high
bandwidth for data transmission. Wi-Fi 6E APs and Wi-Fi 6E CPE, combined with
CoSR technology, offer the network-wide gigabit wireless bandwidth needed for
such medical devices.

Mobile monitoring, asset management, and medical waste management: IoT

terminals, such as positioning wristbands, IV monitoring, and ECG wearables are
widely used for improving the efficiency of patient care. Wi-Fi and IoT
convergence technology enables such IoT terminals to easily access the
converged IoT and Wi-Fi network. In addition, IoT and Wi-Fi convergence halves
the TCO.

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Typical Applications
 A Acronyms and
Abbreviations
Table A-1 Acronyms and abbreviations

Acronym/Abbreviation Full Name

AGV Automated Guided Vehicle

AOI Automated Optical Inspection

AR Augmented Reality

CCA Clear Channel Assessment

CoSR Coordinated Spatial Reuse

CPE Customer Premise Equipment

CSMA/CA Carrier Sense Multiple Access /Collision Avoidance

CU Channel Utilization

CWND Congestion Window

DCF Distributed Coordination Function

DFI Dynamic Flow Inspection

HR High Reliability

IoT Internet of Things

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Acronyms and Abbreviations
Acronym/Abbreviation Full Name

LM Link Measurement

LXC Linux Container

MIMO Multiple-Input Multiple-Output

MU-MIMO Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output

OBSS Overlapping Basic Service Set

OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access

PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express

PER Packet Error Ratio

PLC Programmable Logic Controller

RSSI Received Signal Strength Indicator

RTT Round Trip Time

RWND Receiver Window

SNR Signal to Noise Ratio

TCO Total Cost of Operation

TxBF Transmit Beamforming

VR Virtual Reality

WAC Wireless Access Controller

Wi-Fi Wireless Fidelity

WLAN Wireless Local Area Network

WPA3 Wi-Fi Protected Access 3

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Acronyms and Abbreviations
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Acronyms and Abbreviations