Target Wake Time: Scheduled access in IEEE 802.11ax WLANs

TL;DR

This paper discusses the Target Wake Time (TWT) mechanism in IEEE 802.11ax WLANs, highlighting its potential to schedule transmissions, reduce contention, and enable collision-free, deterministic access in dense wireless networks.

Contribution

It introduces TWT as an effective scheduling mechanism that enhances WLAN performance and compatibility with advanced features in high-density environments.

Findings

TWT can significantly reduce channel contention.

TWT enables more efficient multiuser and spatial reuse mechanisms.

TWT paves the way for collision-free WLAN access.

Abstract

The increasing interest for ubiquitous networking, and the tremendous popularity gained by IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) in recent years, is leading to very dense deployments where high levels of channel contention may prevent to meet the increasing users' demands. To mitigate the negative effects of channel contention, the Target Wake Time (TWT) mechanism included in the IEEE 802.11ax amendment can have a significant role, as it provides an extremely simple but effective mechanism to schedule transmissions in time. Moreover, in addition to reduce the contention between stations, the use of TWT may also contribute to take full advantage of other novel mechanisms in the IEEE 802.11 universe, such as multiuser transmissions, multi-AP cooperation, spatial reuse and coexistence in high-density WLAN scenarios. Overall, we believe TWT may be a first step towards a practical collision-free and deterministic access in future WLANs.