Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.11bn with Coordinated TDMA on Real-Time Applications

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of coordinated TDMA in IEEE 802.11bn Wi-Fi for reducing latency and jitter in real-time applications through simulations, highlighting a 24% improvement in worst-case latency.

Contribution

It introduces a Co-TDMA scheduling strategy for IEEE 802.11bn and demonstrates its impact on latency and jitter through system-level simulations.

Findings

Co-TDMA reduces jitter and worst-case latency in real-time Wi-Fi traffic.

Simulation results show approximately 24% improvement in worst-case latency.

Co-TDMA's effectiveness varies with network congestion and traffic volume.

Abstract

Wi-Fi plays a crucial role in connecting electronic devices and providing communication services in everyday life. Recently, there has been a growing demand for services that require low-latency communication, such as real-time applications. The latest amendments to Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11bn, are being developed to address these demands with technologies such as the multiple access point coordination (MAPC). In this paper, we demonstrate that coordinated TDMA (Co-TDMA), one of the MAPC techniques, effectively reduces the latency of transmitting time-sensitive traffic. In particular, we focus on worst-case latency and jitter, which are key metrics for evaluating the performance of real-time applications. We first introduce a Co-TDMA scheduling strategy. We then investigate how this scheduling strategy impacts latency under varying levels of network congestion and traffic volume characteristics. Finally, we validate our findings through system-level simulations. Our simulation results demonstrate that Co-TDMA effectively mitigates jitter and worst-case latency for low-latency traffic, with the latter exhibiting an improvement of approximately 24%.