# On the Performance of the Spatial Reuse Operation in IEEE 802.11ax WLANs

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the performance benefits of the Spatial Reuse operation in IEEE 802.11ax WLANs through simulation, showing significant improvements in channel utilization, throughput, and delay, especially in dense and high-traffic scenarios.

## Contribution

It provides the first simulation-based analysis of the IEEE 802.11ax Spatial Reuse operation, highlighting its potential to enhance WLAN performance in various network conditions.

## Key findings

- SR significantly improves channel utilization
- Higher throughput and lower delay with SR in dense networks
- Maximum gains observed under high density and traffic load

## Abstract

The Spatial Reuse (SR) operation included in the IEEE 802.11ax-2020 (11ax) amendment aims at increasing the number of parallel transmissions in an Overlapping Basic Service Set (OBSS). However, many unknowns exist about the performance gains that can be achieved through SR. In this paper, we provide a brief introduction to the SR operation described in the IEEE 802.11ax (draft D4.0). Then, a simulation-based implementation is provided in order to explore the performance gains of the SR operation. Our results show the potential of using SR in different scenarios covering multiple network densities and traffic loads. In particular, we observe significant improvements on the channel utilization when applying SR with respect to the default configuration, thus allowing to increase the throughput and reduce the delay. Interestingly, the highest improvements provided by the SR operation are observed in the most pessimistic situations in terms of network density and traffic load.