Abstract:
The IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) and IEEE 802.11be
(Wi-Fi 7) adopt the OFDMA technology to provide high-speed
and uninterrupted communications in the dense network. Until
the advent of IEEE 802.11ax standard, Wireless LAN (WLAN)
predominantly uses the Random Access (RA) mechanism to
access the network. IEEE 802.11ax and IEEE 802.11be
(proposed) provide another access mechanism for WLAN (i.e.,
Wi-Fi), which is known as Scheduled Access (SA). This
mechanism utilizes the OFDMA technology to provide high-
speed and smooth communications in congested areas. By the
way, the performance of the OFDMA-based wireless LAN
largely depends on the scheduling protocol. Many researchers
propose RA and SA protocols independently, which do not
consider the simultaneous implementation of both mechanisms.
This paper proposes a Proportional Resource Scheduling (PRS)
scheme for the OFDMA-based wireless LAN that simultaneously
implements RA and SA mechanisms for data transmission. We
design two algorithms for the resource scheduling for the PRS
protocol. Algorithm 1 provides the initial scheduling information,
which is received by Algorithm 2 as the input. After performing
revision, Algorithm 2 provides the final scheduling information
to the access point. The PRS distributes the channel resources
proportionally to the stations according to their available loads.
Thus, it utilizes the resources efficiently and increases the
throughput and fairness in accessing the channel. We construct
analytical models both for the SA and RA mechanisms and
conduct rigorous simulations to measure the efficiency of the
PRS protocol. The analyses validate the robustness of the
proposed protocol in throughput, goodput, fairness, and
retransmissions. The main contribution of the proposed protocol
is that it provides a framework for simultaneous implementation
of RA and SA mechanisms for the future wireless LAN
