Multiple BSSs Association Based Spatial Clustering Group Access Protocol for Next Generation WLAN

The next generation Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) IEEE 802.11be regards Extremely High Throughput (EHT) as its core technology goal, among which multi-band capability and AP cooperation technology are regarded as its key technologies. However, the existing research on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) protocol does not consider the multi-band capability and AP collaboration technology of IEEE 802.11be, so the improvement of system performance is limited and does not meet the EHT requirement. Especially when the nodes in overlapping coverage area have a large number of traffic, it is more important to improve the throughput of nodes in overlapping coverage area. In order to improve the throughput of nodes in overlapping coverage area, this paper proposes a spatial clustering group OFDMA protocol associated with multiple Basic Service Sets (BSSs). The protocol allows nodes in overlapping coverage area to be associated with multiple BSSs at the same time by using multi-band capability, that is, multi-association; Using AP collaboration technology allows nodes to perform parallel backoff with channels on multiple BSSs to improve access efficiency. Nodes in the overlapping coverage area are associated with the channels of multiple BSSs for parallel backoff. Node completed backoff and successfully accessed triggers a spatial clustering group (SCG) with close to its spatial location. OFDMA mode is used by SCG to access and transmit, thus increasing the access opportunities of nodes within overlapping coverage, thereby improving the throughput. The simulation results show that using the SCG-OFDMA protocol proposed in this paper associated with two BSSs, its throughput of nodes within overlapping coverage can achieve 353.41% higher than the IEEE 802.11ax protocol and 558.33% higher than the OMAX protocol respectively.