Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11ac/ax WLAN technologies under the presence of CFO

In the recent twenty years, numerous IEEE 802.11 technologies have been developed for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) connectivity. The common point of these technologies is that the latest IEEE 802.11 version has always several advanced features compared to its predecessor. IEEE 802.11ax is one of the upcoming technologies, primarily developed for the Industrial, Security and Medical (ISM) band. IEEE 802.11ax is planned to be released in 2019 and extend the features of IEEE 802.11ac. This paper presents a simulation-based performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11ac/ax technologies on the physical layer (PHY) level. The transmitter and receiver models of both technologies have been implemented and tested in MATLAB. Furthermore, this work explores IEEE 802.11ac/ax performance degradation that may be caused by carrier frequency offset (CFO). Results show lower resistance of IEEE 802.11ax against CFO.