Continuous Multi-Link Operation: A Contention-Free Mechanism for the Unlicensed Spectrum
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel mechanism to enforce contention-free channel access in the unlicensed spectrum, as opposed to the traditional contention-based approach. To achieve this objective, we build on the Wi-Fi~7 multi-link operation (MLO) and define the means whereby independent channel access attempts are performed in all the addressable links to ensure one available channel/link is ready for transmission at all times, such that a sequence of continuous acquired channels can be maintained. We call this method continuous multi-link operation (ConMLO). In this work, we aim to verify the applicability of ConMLO, its ability to retain spectrum resources for a given duration of time, and its fairness with respect existing approaches, namely legacy single-link operation (SLO) and MLO. To this end, we use realistic data traffic measurements acquired in a crowded football stadium as an exemplary case of challenging spectrum occupation. Our results show that the proposed ConMLO can effectively guarantee continuous channel acquisition under different occupancy scenarios without compromising fairness of channel access compared to existing legacy modes.
- L. Galati-Giordano, G. Geraci et al., “What will Wi-Fi 8 be? A primer on IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability,” to appear in IEEE Communication Magazine and available at arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.10442, 2023.
- F. Wilhelmi, L. Galati-Giordano et al., “Throughput Analysis of IEEE 802.11bn Coordinated Spatial Reuse,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.09169, 2023.
- M. Carrascosa-Zamacois, G. Geraci et al., “Understanding multi-link operation in Wi-Fi 7: Performance, anomalies, and solutions,” in 2023 IEEE 34th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC). IEEE, 2023, pp. 1–6.
- S. Barrachina-Muñoz, B. Bellalta et al., “Wi-Fi channel bonding: An all-channel system and experimental study from urban hotspots to a sold-out stadium,” IEEE/ACM ToN, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 2101–2114, 2021.
- Federal Communications Commission (FCC), “FCC FACT SHEET* Advancing Understanding of Non-Federal Spectrum Usage Notice of Inquiry,” WT Docket, vol. 23-232, 2023.
- M. S. Afaqui, E. Garcia-Villegas et al., “Evaluation of dynamic sensitivity control algorithm for IEEE 802.11 ax,” in 2015 IEEE wireless communications and networking conference (WCNC). IEEE, 2015, pp. 1060–1065.
- H. Zhou and Y. Deng, “Federated reinforcement learning for uplink centric broadband communication optimization over unlicensed spectrum,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.11478, 2024.
- F. Wilhelmi, P. Baracca et al., “ConPA: A Contention-free Mechanism with Power Adaptation for Beyond Listen-Before-Talk,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.14667, 2024.
- K. Chemrov, D. Bankov et al., “Smart preliminary channel access to support real-time traffic in Wi-Fi networks,” Future Internet, vol. 14, no. 10, p. 296, 2022.
Paper Prompts
Sign up for free to create and run prompts on this paper using GPT-5.
Top Community Prompts
Collections
Sign up for free to add this paper to one or more collections.