A Scheduler for Real-Time Applications Service in Overlapping Wi-Fi 8 Networks

One of the goals of the new IEEE 802.11bn (Wi-Fi 8) standard is to support real-time applications (RTAs), which require low delay and high transmission reliability. In Wi-Fi Basic Service Sets (BSSs), fulfilling these requirements can be challenging because stations (STAs) shall wait for other STAs to finish transmission before starting their ones. Fortunately, IEEE 802.11ax has introduced Parameterized Spatial Reuse (PSR), which allows transmitting data in one BSS during a transmission in another BSS. PSR can be used together with the mechanisms for coordinating access points (APs) of different BSSs that will appear in Wi-Fi 8 to reduce delays for RTA traffic. In this paper, we develop an algorithm that schedules transmissions and uses PSR and AP coordination to reduce delays in the case of three overlapping BSSs. Using simulation, we show that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces delays for RTA traffic compared with algorithms that do not use the AP coordination, while maintaining a fixed fraction of BSS downtime and the fairness of channel resource allocation between STAs