Coordinated Multiple AP Wi-Fi Transmision over F5G FTTR

Fibre-to-The-Room (FTTR) has been defined by the ETSI ISG F5G as the next generation home networking solution. The FTTR system integrates Wi-Fi and optical fibre technologies in the user premises, providing access rates at the level of gigabits per second directly to the end users. In this work, we investigate the issue of multiple access point (AP) coordination, a key challenge of managing the FTTR network. A coordinated scheduling scheme is proposed to enhance the traditional CSMA/CA scheme. Our proposal considers not only the Wi-Fi channel availability but also the AP status and optical link connectivity. The downlink and uplink status is reported through the optical links to the central unit of the FTTR system. Scheduling decisions are made centralized to reduce transmission conflict. An FTTR test bed with multiple APs is set up to evaluate this proposal. The test results show impressive performance improvement as compared to the CSMA/CA scheme.