Improving Wi-Fi 8 Latency with Coordinated Spatial Reuse

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR) can significantly reduce latency in Wi-Fi 8 networks by enabling simultaneous transmissions, thereby improving spectrum efficiency and overall performance in dense environments.

Contribution

The paper proposes an implementation of Co-SR aligned with Wi-Fi 8 standards and evaluates its performance through simulations in relevant WLAN scenarios.

Findings

Delay reduction of 31% to 95% with Co-SR

Improved spectral efficiency in dense environments

Enhanced network performance in Wi-Fi 8

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 (Co-SR) can potentially contribute to optimizing spectrum resource utilization. This mechanism is expected to enable simultaneous transmissions, thereby boosting spectral efficiency in dense environments and increasing the overall network performance. In this paper, we shed light on the performance of Co-SR for Wi-Fi 8 networks. For that, we propose an implementation of Co-SR aligned with ongoing Wi-Fi 8 standardization efforts. The evaluation is done on a Wi-Fi simulator, which allows us to study the performance of the proposed Co-SR mechanisms in relevant scenarios. The results obtained in a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) consisting of four APs show delay reduction with Co-SR ranging from 31% to 95% when compared to Distributed Coordination Function (DCF).