Dynamic traffic allocation in IEEE 802.11be multi-Link WLANs

The multi-link operation (MLO) is a key feature of the next IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput amendment. Through its adoption, it is expected to enhance users’ experience by improving throughput rates and latency. However, potential MLO gains are tied to how traffic is distributed across the m...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: López Raventós, Álvaro, Bellalta, Boris
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/55589
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LWC.2022.3171442
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:IEEE 802.11be
Multi-link operation
Traffic management
Dynamic allocation
WLANs
Descripción
Sumario:The multi-link operation (MLO) is a key feature of the next IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput amendment. Through its adoption, it is expected to enhance users’ experience by improving throughput rates and latency. However, potential MLO gains are tied to how traffic is distributed across the multiple radio interfaces. In this letter, we introduce a traffic manager atop MLO, and evaluate different high-level traffic-to-link allocation policies to distribute incoming traffic over the set of enabled interfaces. Following a flow-level approach, we compare both non-dynamic and dynamic traffic balancing policy types. The results show that the use of a dynamic policy, along with MLO, allows to significantly reduce the congestion suffered by traffic flows, enhancing the traffic delivery in all the evaluated scenarios, and in particular improving the quality of service received by video flows. Moreover, we show that the adoption of MLO in future Wi-Fi networks improves also the coexistence with non-MLO networks, which results in performance gains for both MLO and non-MLO networks.