OFDMA Resource Allocation for Real-Time Applications in IEEE 802.11ax Networks

Support of real-time applications that impose strict requirements on packet loss ratio and latency is an essential feature of the next generation Wi-Fi networks. Initially introduced in the 802.11ax amendment to the Wi-Fi standard, uplink OFDMA seems to be a promising solution for supported lowlatency data transmission from the numerous stations to an access point. In this paper, we study how to allocate OFDMA resources in an 802.11ax network and propose an algorithm aimed at providing the delay less than one millisecond and reliability up to 99.999% as required by numerous real-time applications. We design a resource allocation algorithm and with extensive simulation, show that it decreases delays for real-time traffic by orders of magnitude, while the throughput for non-real-time traffic is reduced insignificantly.