Spatial Reuse in IEEE 802.11bn Coordinated Multi-AP WLANs: A Throughput Analysis

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the performance of Coordinated Spatial Reuse (C-SR) in Wi-Fi 8 networks, demonstrating significant throughput improvements through an extended Bianchi's model in dense WLAN environments.

Contribution

It extends Bianchi's throughput model to support multi-AP transmissions with C-SR, providing a detailed performance analysis for Wi-Fi 8 networks.

Findings

C-SR can increase throughput by up to 280%.

Throughput gains depend on inter-AP distance and station placement.

Numerical results validate the effectiveness of C-SR in dense WLANs.

Abstract

IEEE 802.11 networks continuously adapt to meet the stringent requirements of emerging applications like cloud gaming, eXtended Reality (XR), and video streaming services, which require high throughput, low latency, and high reliability. To address these challenges, Coordinated Spatial Reuse (C-SR) can potentially contribute to optimizing spectrum resource utilization. This mechanism is expected to enable a higher number of simultaneous transmissions, thereby boosting spectral efficiency in dense environments and increasing the overall network performance. In this paper, we focus on the performance analysis of C-SR in Wi-Fi 8 networks. In particular, we consider an implementation of C-SR where channel access and inter-Access Point (AP) communication are performed over-the-air using the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). For such a purpose, we leverage the well-known Bianchi's throughput model and extend it to support multi-AP transmissions via C-SR. Numerical results in a WLAN network that consists of four APs show C-SR throughput gains ranging from 54% to 280% depending on the inter-AP distance and the position of the stations in the area.