Enhancing the Performance of Wi-Fi 7 Network via Investigation of Multi-Link and UORA

Abstract

With the introduction of multi-link operation, the IEEE 802.11be standard, known as Wi-Fi 7, makes it possible for Wi-Fi devices to simultaneously access multiple channels. However, current studies on multi-link devices (MLDs) concentrated on conventional Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) networks, which experience severe performance degradation in dense user access scenarios. To address this issue, we propose a novel channel access mechanism termed Multi-link Corresponding Resource Unit Binding (MCRUB), which captures the joint impact of multi-link and uplink OFDMA random access (UORA) to enhance network throughput. Moreover, we develop an analytical model for this mechanism and derive the condition for approximate optimal network throughput to optimize control parameters. Simulation results demonstrate that our model accurately predicts the steady-state behavior of the MCRUB mechanism.