How much can we reuse? An empirical analysis of the performance benefits achieved by spatial-reuse of IEEE 802.11ax

The IEEE 802.11ax standard is the latest innovation in WiFi, also referred to as WiFi 6 (sixth generation). It focuses on improving the performance in dense Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). It proposes various features to improve the same. OFDMA, spatial-reuse, and Downlink and Uplink MUMIMO are the most important features introduced. In this paper, we focus on the spatial-reuse feature. The standard proposes OBSS (Overlapping Basic Service Set) colouring to increase spatial reuse in dense scenarios. We evaluate the expected performance benefits offered by the spatial reuse technique. We have used ns-3 to simulate a variety of real networks and examine the performance of the proposed reuse technique. We show that spatial-reuse capabilities help achieve significant performance benefits for various network types under certain configurations of Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) threshold, inter-AP distance and power. These results shall act as a reference point for future testing to take place before eventual deployment.