A Node-Grouping Based Spatial Spectrum Reuse Method for WLANs in Dense Residential Scenarios

Lately, an increasing number of wireless local area network (WLAN) access points (APs) are deployed to serve an ever increasing number of mobile stations (STAs). Due to the limited frequency spectrum, more and more AP and STA nodes try to access the same channel. Spatial spectrum reuse is promoted by the IEEE 802.11ax task group through dynamic sensitivity control (DSC), which permits cochannel operation when the received signal power at the prospective transmitting node (PTN) is lower than an adjusted carrier sensing threshold (CST). Previously-proposed DSC approaches typically calculate the CST without node grouping by using a margin parameter that remains fixed during operation. Setting the margin has previously been done heuristically. Finding a suitable value has remained an open problem. Therefore, herein, we propose a DSC approach that employs a node grouping method for adaptive calculation of the CST at the PTN with a channel-aware and margin-free formula. Numerical simulations for dense residential WLAN scenario reveal total throughput and Jain's fairness index gains of 8.4% and 7.6%, respectively, vs. no DSC (as in WLANs deployed to present).