Target Wake Time in IEEE 802.11 WLANs: Survey, Challenges, and Opportunities

IF 4.5 3区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Computer Communications Pub Date : 2025-03-13 DOI:10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108127

Shyam Krishnan Venkateswaran, Ching-Lun Tai, Atif Ahmed, Raghupathy Sivakumar

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Wi-Fi has become the most widely used Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology, but as the density of WLAN deployments and the number of devices per network increase, congestion has become a significant issue. Scheduling features in Wi-Fi have the potential to alleviate these issues by managing medium access more efficiently. While there have been other scheduling features in Wi-Fi in the past, none were widely adopted and were limited in functionality. Target Wake Time (TWT) introduces powerful scheduling capabilities to Wi-Fi as part of Wi-Fi 6, representing a fundamental shift in how Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) manage channel access for Stations (STAs) while improving energy efficiency. TWT is extremely versatile and is poised to play a crucial role in reducing contention and enhancing performance, especially in dense network environments. The potential benefits are particularly valuable for Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, where low power consumption and efficient medium access are essential due to the large number of connected devices. This paper presents an in-depth survey of the research on TWT, categorizing and analyzing existing literature while identifying practical challenges often overlooked due to idealized assumptions. We introduce comprehensive models of infrastructure-mode APs and STAs to facilitate discussions of current and future work. We provide a detailed analysis of the challenges and issues that must be addressed to fully realize the performance gains promised by TWT. Furthermore, we explore the potential future applications of TWT, particularly in conjunction with upcoming features in IEEE 802.11 such as multi-link operation (MLO) and multi-AP coordination, offering insights into novel uses of TWT for enhancing Wi-Fi performance.

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来源期刊

Computer Communications 工程技术-电信学

CiteScore

14.10

自引率

5.00%

发文量

397

审稿时长

66 days

期刊介绍： Computer and Communications networks are key infrastructures of the information society with high socio-economic value as they contribute to the correct operations of many critical services (from healthcare to finance and transportation). Internet is the core of today''s computer-communication infrastructures. This has transformed the Internet, from a robust network for data transfer between computers, to a global, content-rich, communication and information system where contents are increasingly generated by the users, and distributed according to human social relations. Next-generation network technologies, architectures and protocols are therefore required to overcome the limitations of the legacy Internet and add new capabilities and services. The future Internet should be ubiquitous, secure, resilient, and closer to human communication paradigms. Computer Communications is a peer-reviewed international journal that publishes high-quality scientific articles (both theory and practice) and survey papers covering all aspects of future computer communication networks (on all layers, except the physical layer), with a special attention to the evolution of the Internet architecture, protocols, services, and applications.