Survey on OFDMA based MAC protocols for the next generation WLAN

The physical (PHY) layer peak rate of the wireless local area network (WLAN) has been almost exponentially improved over the past 15 years since 1999. However, it is proved that the throughput is very low comparing to the PHY peak rate, and the media access control (MAC) efficiency is very low in the current WLANs specification, especially in dense deployment scenarios. Therefore, to achieve high MAC efficiency the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board (IEEE-SA) approves IEEE 802.11ax in March 2014, to draw up a brand new amendment for the next generation WLAN. One of the promising technologies to improve MAC efficiency is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). In this paper, we firstly investigate the existing OFDMA based MAC protocols in the literature. Then, a framework of OFDMA based MAC protocol for the next generation WLAN is proposed. Finally, all of the existing OFDMA based MAC protocols listed in this paper are compared according to the proposed design issues. To the best of our knowledge this paper is the first survey focusing on OFDMA based MAC protocols for the next generation WLAN.

[1]  Byeong Gi Lee,et al.  Generalized CSMA/CA for OFDMA systems: protocol design, throughput analysis, and implementation issues , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[2]  Hao Wang,et al.  A Novel Random Access Mechanism for OFDMA Wireless Networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference GLOBECOM 2010.

[3]  Jaesung Lim,et al.  C-OFDMA: Improved Throughput for Next Generation WLAN Systems Based on OFDMA and CSMA/CA , 2013, 2013 4th International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation.

[4]  Byeong Gi Lee,et al.  Opportunistic multi-channel CSMA protocol for OFDMA systems , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[5]  Salman Khan,et al.  Hybrid OFDMA/CSMA Based Medium Access Control for Next-Generation Wireless LANs , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

[6]  Xiaofei Wang,et al.  Multi-user Parallel Channel Access for high efficiency carrier grade wireless LANs , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).

[7]  Mohamed Kamoun,et al.  Efficient backward compatible allocation mechanism for multi-user CSMA/CA schemes , 2009, 2009 First International Conference on Communications and Networking.

[8]  Shinichi Miyamoto,et al.  Novel DCF-based multi-user MAC protocol and dynamic resource allocation for OFDMA WLAN systems , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC).

[9]  Jaesung Lim,et al.  Group Contention-Based OFDMA MAC Protocol for Multiple Access Interference-Free in WLAN Systems , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[10]  Der-Jiunn Deng,et al.  IEEE 802.11ax: Next generation wireless local area networks , 2014, 10th International Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness.