Centralized Contention Based MAC for OFDMA WLAN

Abstract

The IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) is the most widely deployed communication standard in the world. Currently, the IEEE 802.11ax draft standard is one of the most advanced and promising among future wireless network standards. However, the suggested uplink-OFDMA (UL-OFDMA) random access method, based on trigger frame-random access (TF-R) from task group ax (TGax), does not yet show satisfying system performance. To enhance the UL-OF DMA capability of the IEEE 802.11ax draft standard, we propose a centralized contention-based MAC (CC-MAC) and describe its detailed operation. In this paper, we analyze the performance of CC-MAC by solving theMarkov chain model and evaluating BSS throughput compared to other methods, such as DCF and TF-R, by computer simulation. Our results show that CC-MAC is a scalable and efficient scheme for improving the system performance in a UL-OFDMA random access situation in IEEE 802.11ax.