FuPlex: A full duplex MAC for the next generation WLAN

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) has been increasingly developed over several decades. It requires four times throughput improvement in the next generation WLAN. Thus, researchers focus on the co-frequency co-time full duplex technology, which makes the devices transmit and receive packets simultaneously and theoretically doubles the throughput. Some existing works proposed several media access control (MAC) protocols on the assumption that all nodes have full duplex capability. However, it is more practicable that only AP possesses full duplex capability whereas STAs have no full duplex capability in the early stage of introducing full duplex technology into the next generation WLAN. In this paper, a simple and compatible full duplex MAC protocol named FuPlex is proposed. The design details of FuPlex, including primary access, secondary access and data transmission, are introduced. Simulation results show that FuPlex improves the throughput to 150% compared with legacy IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol.