1

2
Seminar

Presented By
Izzat Fatima 17F-MS-EE-16

Course Title
Computer Networks
3 Outline
 Introduction
 Descriptive Part
 Problem Statement
 Core Idea
 Summary
 Conclusion
 Opinion Part
 Strengths
 Limitations
 Research Paper: Inroduction
4

Paper Name: “A Tutorial on IEEE 802.11ax

High Efficiency WLANs”
 Type of Paper: Survey Paper
 Authors: Evgeny Khorov, Anton Kiryanov
 Institution: Institute for Information Transmission
Problems, Russian Academy of
Sciences, Russia
 Venue: IEEE Communications Surveys &
Tutorials (2018)
5 DESCRIPTIVE PART
Problem Statement:

The main problem is throughput per- area in high-

density scenarios, coverage areas and longer
battery life.
6 CORE IDEA:

This paper will highlight selected significant

improvements including PHY enhancements,
MUMIMO extensions, power saving advances, and
so on which make this standard a very significant
step forward with respect to its predecessor
802.11ac.
7

Descriptive Summary
of Evaluation
 Main Features of 802.11ax
8 Physical properties:
PHY Properties Features
Spectrum up to 40 MHz at 2.4, up to 160
MHz at 5 GHz
OFDM Order 1024-QAM

OFDM Symbol duration 12.8 s

OFDM Guard Interval 0.8, 1.6 or 3.2 s
MIMO Order 8
Maximal Data Rate 9:6 Gbps
Power Management Enhanced TWT, Enhanced
Microsleep
Fragmentation Flexible
MU transmission direction DL and UL
Random Channel Access UL OFDMA Random Access on
top of CSMA/CA
 Channel Access:
9
 OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access)
multiplexing
 MU-MIMO (Multiple-user multiple input/multiple output)
antennas and beamforming for both DL and UL.
 1024-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation)
 Target Wake Time (TWT), and load balancing
 OFDMA gain in the overlapped network scenario
 MODULATION AND FRAME
10
FORMAT
 802.11ac, it is based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) and supports operations in 20 MHz, 40
MHz, 80 MHz and 160 MHz channels.
 802.11ax device can separate OFDM symbols by the
Guard Interval selected among the values 0:8s, 1:6s and
3:2s, which allows the reduction of overhead down to 6%,
opposed to the 12-25% GI overhead in the 802.11ac
standard.
 Forward error correction codes —have code rates of 1/2,
2/3, 3/4 and 5/6
11 Cont…

 The 802.11ax amendment describes an

optional Dual Carrier Modulation (DCM).
 DCM enhances transmission robustness by
allocating the same signal on a pair of tones,
which are separated far apart in the
frequency domain.
12 PHY Frame Format
 4 types of PHY frames for
 the Single User (SU) transmission,
 for the extended range SU transmission,
 for the DL MU transmission
 for the UL MU transmission.
 The main feature of the DL MU transmission is that the
frame contains a common preamble describing which
tones a particular receiver shall decode to obtain its part
of the Data field.
 For the UL MU transmission, the preamble is common and
it is emitted by all the Stations.
13 Cont…
 For all the frame types, the preamble is duplicated in every 20
MHz subchannel within the transmission band
Preamble:
It consists of two parts:
 The legacy part: contains training fields, which synchronize the
transmitter and the receiver, and the legacy signal field(L-SIG).
 L-SIG allows the calculation of the frame duration
 The High Efficiency: HE part of the preamble starts with a
repetition of the L-SIG, which is followed by the mandatory HE-
SIG-A field, an optional HE-SIG-B field and training fields
needed for tuning MIMO.
14 802.11ax PHY frame format
15 Cont..

 the main purpose of the HE-STF (high efficiency short training

field) field is to improve the automatic gain control
estimation in a MIMO transmission,
 the HE-LTF fields provide a tool for the receiver to estimate
the MIMO channel between the set of outputs and the
receive chains.
16 Adjustment of Sensitivity
Threshold and Transmit Power
 The idea of DSC is based on the dynamic adjustment of the
carrier sensing threshold referred to as the DSC threshold,
which determines when the STA considers the medium to be
busy.
 reduced the number of exposed STAs, DSC increases the
number of hidden STAs. To address this issue, various methods
have been proposed. One of them is using the RTS/CTS
mechanism together with DSC.
17 Primary and secondary
channels in 802.11ac networks
Obtained channel access in the primary 20 MHz channel
following the EDCA rules, a STA can expend the bandwidth by
step-by-step concatenation of the secondary channels if they
are idle.
18 MU TRANSMISSIONS & CHANNEL
ACCESS
802.11ax OFDMA Fundamentals:
 In 802.11ax, the channel resources are allocated over time and
frequency
 For simplification of resource management and device
operation, and to retain compatibility with legacy devices, the
OFDMA transmission is organized on a per-frame basis.
 802.11ax delivers a nearly 40 percent increase in pure throughput
thanks to higher order QAM modulation, which allows for more
data to be transmitted per packet
 This means that a frame can carry information from or to multiple
stations.
 MU-MIMO, up to eight users can be assigned to an Recourse Unit.
19
20 Cont…
 Special Trigger frames which initiate parallel Request To
Send/Clear To Send (RTS/CTS) handshakes, request block
acknowledgments from a group of STAs, and collect
beamforming reports or buffer status reports.
 In 802.11ax networks, OFDMA works on CSMA/CA
21 TARGET WAKEUP TIME (TWT)

 APs can use TWT with doze states to also improve

congestion and device battery life.
 TWT allows APs to schedule times for devices to access the
network; they can go into a doze state until the wakeup
time.
 Scheduling allows network traffic to be optimized and with
devices in a sleep state until their scheduled
appointments, device battery life can be extended.
 Which types of frames should be transmitted within TWT SPs.
 Whether the transmission is to be done at the primary 20
MHz channel.
 Whether the TWT SPs are Trigger-enabled. Trigger enabled
TWT SPs are favorable for UL MU operation and are only
possible if TWT responding STA is the AP
22
Conclusion:

 It targets a greater throughput-per-area opposed to

“just” the absolute throughput increase of past
amendments via more advanced modulation and
coding schemes.
 The most disruptive innovation consists in the adoption
of OFDMA for both directions (DL and UL).
23

Opinion Part
24 Strengths
 OFDMA permits to cope with frequency selective
interference by assigning the best subcarriers for
STAs. Apart from that, it reduces the overhead
caused by backoffs, interframe spaces, preambles
and PHY headers, which carry common information
for all the STAs.
25 Weaknesses

 The 802.11 standardization process has focused

on the introduction of new (or improved)
functionalities, but it has mostly avoided to
determine how to use them.
 Dual carrier modulation and shorter Guard
Intervals — which affect the transmission rate
and the reliability.