IEEE 802.11ba -- Extremely Low Power Wi-Fi for Massive Internet of Things: Challenges, Open Issues, Performance Evaluation

TL;DR

This paper discusses IEEE 802.11ba, a low-power Wi-Fi standard with Wake-Up Radio, analyzing its protocol, open issues, energy efficiency improvements, and potential for supporting massive IoT deployments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of IEEE 802.11ba, explores approaches for energy-efficient data transmission, and evaluates its performance benefits for IoT applications.

Findings

802.11ba significantly reduces energy consumption in IoT devices.

The Wake-Up Radio mechanism decreases channel time and power usage.

Open issues include protocol optimization and interoperability challenges.

Abstract

Many recent activities of IEEE 802.11 Working group have been focused on improving power efficiency of Wi-Fi to make it favorable for massive Internet of Things scenarios, in which swarms of battery supplied sensors rarely communicate with remote servers. The latest step towards this direction is the work on a new IEEE 802.11ba amendment to the Wi-Fi standard, which introduces Wake-Up Radio. This radio is an additional interface with extremely low power consumption that is used to transmit control information from the access point to stations while their primary radio is switched off. This paper describes the IEEE 802.11ba protocol, discusses its open issues, investigates several approaches to provide energy efficient data transmission with 802.11ba, and evaluates how much 802.11ba improves energy efficiency and even reduces channel time consumption.