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802.11AX
TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE WI-FI MARKET AND THE GENESIS OF 802.11AX

3
TECHNICAL FEATURES OF 802.11AX
7
USAGE MODELS: WHAT CAN WE DO WITH 802.11AX?
27
BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY, DEPLOYMENT
CONSIDERATIONS AND UPGRADE STRATEGIES 28
MANDATORY AND OPTIONAL FEATURES
28
PERFORMANCE ESTIMATES
29
CHANNELIZATION
32
CONCLUSION
32
APPENDICES (EXISTING FEATURES AND NEW
802.11AX FEATURES DEFERRED TO WAVE 2) 33
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THE WI-FI MARKET AND THE GENESIS OF 802.11AX

Wi-Fi is by now the established way to access the Internet,
whether at home or at work, from PCs or cellphones.
In 2018, 19 years after the first meeting of the Wi-Fi Alliance,
Wi-Fi will carry more than 50% of all Internet traffic.

Figure 2: Average Monthly Data Usage by Operator

January 2018 (Android users, in MB)

Wi-Fi standards originate in the Institute of Electrical and

Electronics Engineers (IEEE), where the 802.11 working
group meets 6 times a year, with many interim conference
Figure 1a: Wi-Fi Device Annual Shipments
calls for specialist task groups, to update and extend the
technical standards that underpin Wi-Fi. Once the IEEE has
completed the standard, the focus shifts to the Wi-Fi Alliance,
the industry trade forum that owns the ‘Wi-Fi’ trademark,
where a series of plugfests support the drafting of a test
plan and interoperability certification program. This is how
the industry ensures that Wi-Fi clients work with Wi-Fi access
points, across all the different vendors in the ecosystem.

The last major ‘PHY’ or physical-layer certification was

802.11ac, with ‘wave 1’ commercial shipments commencing
in 2014 and ‘wave 2’ shipments in 2016. But the work on
802.11ac goes all the way back to 2008: the gestation period
for this work can be long.

Figure 1b: Wi-Fi Device Cumulative Shipments So it was that, even before 802.11ac wave 2 equipment
started shipping, the IEEE started work on the next ‘PHY’
standard, designated ‘802.11ax’. The project formally
With around 18 billion Wi-Fi devices shipped, 8 billion still kicked‑off in March 2014, and as of early 2018 is progressing
in use and 3 billion new ones added every year, it is difficult through a series of ‘letter ballots’: the scope of the standard
to find anywhere without a Wi-Fi signal. Even cellphone is now set, and with each revision the details become
networks, which have been improving speeds and capacities increasingly solid. Final approval in the IEEE is expected late
with the LTE build-out, small cells and flat-rate data plans, in 2019, but the standard will be effectively frozen many
rely on Wi-Fi to meet the traffic requirements of their months before that.
subscribers. A cellphone today without integrated Wi-Fi
would be unthinkable.

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Figure 3: Enterprise Access Point Shipments

Earlier physical-layer amendments to 802.11 set a precedent coverage from many access points, whether managed in the
where the Wi-Fi Alliance started its work in parallel with same network or uncoordinated, all serving many data-
the IEEE, accelerating time-to-market, and 802.11ax follows hungry client devices. So the IEEE and Wi-Fi Alliance set out
this timeline: work on a ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED AX ’ certification
TM
to improve performance for everyone, especially in areas of
program is already underway; the first plugfest was in early overlapping coverage: in some places, interfering signals can
2018 and the certification is expected to launch some time be reduced by coordinating between access points, while in
in 2019. others, protocol enhancements make the Wi-Fi signal more
resistant to interference.
This overlap of the certification path with the standardization
effort is important to shrink time-to-market, and as the But Internet service for cellphones and PCs is not the only
standards organizations and equipment vendors have use for Wi-Fi. The growing market for Internet-of-Things
experience with prior physical-layer amendments, the risks (IoT) sensors is using Wi-Fi for connectivity in many places,
are understood and can be minimized. but a few limitations have restricted its adoption. So new
features in 802.11ax allow efficient allocation of low data-rate
Design Goals of 802.11ax
connections, improve the battery life of IoT sensors, and
When deciding how to improve Wi-Fi beyond the current extend the range of Wi-Fi signals.
release, 802.11ac, the IEEE and Wi-Fi Alliance surveyed Wi-Fi
deployments and usage, to identify impediments to wider Wi-Fi is also used by wireless Internet service providers

use and causes of dissatisfaction among user communities. (WISPs) and for outdoor point-to-point links, and here
802.11ax includes features to extend range, increase
The conclusion was to depart from previous upgrade data‑rates and reduce the effects of interference.
paths, which advanced peak data-rates under ‘good’ field
conditions, and to focus more on ‘actual’ field conditions, and Timelines
how to improve not just peak performance, but average and The procedures for developing 802.11ax broadly followed
worst-case performance in real-world conditions. prior practice for ‘PHY’ protocols like 802.11n and 802.11ac.
This entailed a certain amount of parallel development, with
These real-world conditions have changed over the years,
the Wi-Fi Alliance starting work on certification tests before
due in no small part to the success of Wi-Fi. Access points are
the IEEE has completely finished the underlying specification.
everywhere, even covering many outdoor spaces. In many
Commercial pressures, as for prior physical-layer protocols,
areas, congestion has become a serious problem.
will push access point and device vendors to release
Examples include busy airports and train stations, ‘pre-standard’ equipment ahead of the Wi-Fi Alliance
multi‑dwelling apartment buildings and even school and certification: expect commercially-available equipment
university settings. All are characterized by overlapping in mid- to late‑2018, ahead of the certification launch in
mid‑2019.
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Figure 4: Enterprise Access Point Shipments

While this schedule-compression is not an ideal way to roll Spectrum and Regulations
out a complex new protocol, the precedents of 802.11n and While there are many initiatives and lobbying efforts aiming
802.11ac indicate that the risk of early 802.11ax equipment to open up new spectrum and ease constraints on the broad
becoming orphaned is very low. Vendors have successfully adoption of unlicensed wireless technologies like Wi-Fi, few
met these challenges before. changes have been completed in time to affect 802.11ax.

802.11ax is already split into two ‘waves’ as was the case for Regulations for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands have not
significantly changed since 802.11ac.
802.11ac. The precise distribution of features is not yet final,
but this paper will focus on those we expect to see in wave One new development is that, while 802.11ac was specified
1, dealing with wave 2 features in an appendix. There will be for operation only in the 5 GHz band (802.11n protocols apply
perhaps two years between wave 1 (timeline shown above) in 2.4 GHz), 802.11ax applies to both bands: it can replace
and wave 2 availability. all Wi-Fi in use today. Although many consider the 2.4 GHz
band so oversubscribed in heavily populated areas as to
Timing upgrades
be unusable, the Wi-Fi community feels there are still many
New physical-layer Wi-Fi standards require new hardware,
opportunities for this band particularly for IoT where its
hence Aruba is often asked by our customers ‘when is
superior propagation characteristics can be exploited.
the right time to upgrade’? The answer, which has been
unchanged from 802.11n to 802.11ac wave 1 and 802.11ac If, as is anticipated, regulatory changes allow new spectrum
wave 2, is to upgrade when you are ready. There will always to be apportioned for unlicensed or lightly-licensed use,
be a new, better Wi-Fi access point on the horizon, about which is suitable for Wi-Fi, the IEEE and Wi-Fi Alliance will be
every two years, as standards advance, silicon becomes able to extend the 802.11ax specifications for operation in
more powerful and equipment vendors add features. After these new bands.
reading a paper like this, some customers are able to identify And, while discussing spectrum, it is important not to neglect
a particular feature they will need, and will decide to wait the third Wi-Fi band. The ‘WiGig’ protocol, using the 60 GHz
for early 802.11ax shipments so they can take advantage band, is now adopted by both the IEEE and Wi-Fi Alliance,
– but most will be driven by budgetary and construction and has significant commonality with Wi-Fi in 2.4 and 5 GHz,
deadlines, and other events, and our advice is to use allowing connections to be seamlessly switched between
the best technology available when it’s time to make the different bands. However, due to different characteristics
purchase decision. at millimeter-wave frequencies, WiGig has a different
physical‑layer specification and is not part of 802.11ax.

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Convergence with LTE and 5G And all Wi-Fi equipment will have to meet new security
This is a time of considerable upheaval in the broad standards for authentication, authorization and encryption.
communications industry. On one side, cellular operators The long-standing WPA2 certification will be replaced during
(mobile operators) are in the midst of their 4G buildout, but 2018 with WPA3, and it is anticipated that all 802.11ax
are already preparing for 5G. They see opportunities not just equipment should also be WPA3-compliant, to support best
in the traditional Internet-to-cellphone market, but many security practices.
others such as IoT, smart cities, fixed wireless broadband
New features in 802.11ax
access to residences, and managed services for enterprise
customers. This, and the availability of new licensed 802.11ax major features
spectrum and new technologies, has made 5G considerably
1. Downlink and uplink OFDMA
broader in scope than the preceding 2G, 3G, 4G generations.
In order to accommodate these new use-cases and markets, 2. Downlink* and uplink multi-user MIMO
the 5G standards organizations have expanded their scope. 3. Higher order modulation
4. Advanced OFDM and coding
Meanwhile the radio technologies proposed for 5G and
5. Outdoor operation
802.11ax share many characteristics: multi-user MIMO,
spatial diversity, beamforming, OFDMA, channel aggregation 6. Reduced power consumption
and others. This is partly because the drivers for spectral 7. Spatial re-use
efficiency, high data-rates, long-range and good battery life 8. Transmit beamforming*
are common to cellular, private and consumer networks, and 9. Single-user operation*
also because these are state-of-the-art radio techniques that
one would expect any new radio standard to incorporate. (* not new in 802.11ax)
Figure 5: 802.11ax major features (both waves)
But another aspect of 5G is perhaps more interesting. In
their quest to cover new markets, especially enterprise There are in excess of 50 features in the IEEE 802.11ax
networking, the 5G standards now include detailed standard: not all will be adopted by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The
specifications for integrating Wi-Fi and associated following is a high-level summary of features (including both
authentication protocols into 5G networks. This, along with wave 1 and wave 2 features).
lightly-licensed spectrum suitable for either LTE/5G or Wi-Fi
• Downlink and Uplink OFDMA: OFDMA is one of the
use, offers a much broader swath of possibilities for the
more complex features in 802.11ax. It allows a single
networks of the future.
transmission (for downlink OFDMA, the access point
So both at the radio and the system level, 5G and Wi-Fi are transmits) to be split by frequency within a channel, such
moving closer together, driven by increasing overlap between that different frames addressed to different client devices
the markets targeted by the 3GPP and Wi-Fi Alliance. use groups of subcarriers. Uplink OFDMA is equivalent
to downlink OFDMA, but in this case multiple client
Related Wi-Fi standards and certifications
devices transmit simultaneously, on different groups of
As a new PHY with some MAC modifications, 802.11ax has subcarriers within the same channel. Uplink OFDMA is
a few pre-requisites. The Wi-Fi Alliance will require all Wi- more difficult to manage than the downlink variety, as
Fi CERTIFIED AX TM equipment to be Wi-Fi CERTIFIED AC TM many different clients must be coordinated: the access
and also Wi-Fi CERTIFIED NTM. It will also require the Wi-Fi point transmits trigger frames to indicate which sub-
CERTIFIED Agile Multiband TM certification, a group of features channels each client can use.
allowing clients broader visibility into network loading, and • Downlink and uplink multi-user MIMO: The downlink
the ability to move (or be moved) to the optimum band and version extends an existing 802.11ac feature where an
access point. Most access points and client devices already access point determines that multipath conditions allow
support the functions required for Agile Multiband, although it to send, in a single time-interval, frames to different
it is a relatively recent program and not all contemporary client devices. 802.11ax increases the size of downlink
equipment has the certification. MU-MIMO groups, allowing more efficient operation.

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Uplink multi-user MIMO is a new addition to 802.11ax, • Spatial re-use: When contending for a transmit
but is deferred to wave 2: like uplink OFDMA, the access opportunity, a device is allowed to transmit over the
point must coordinate the simultaneous transmissions of top of a distant transmission, which would previously
multiple clients. have forced it to wait. This increases network capacity
• Transmit Beamforming: This is another existing feature by allowing more simultaneous transmissions in a given
where an access point uses a number of transmit geographic area.
antennas to land a local maximum signal on a receiver’s In historical context, it can be seen that the new features in
antennas. It improves data-rates and extends range. 802.11ax are mostly extensions or improvements on previous
• Higher-Order Modulation: 802.11a/g introduced work – with the standout exceptions of OFDMA and spatial
64-QAM, and 802.11ac 256 QAM: in 802.11ax, the re-use, which are new territory.
highest-order modulation is extended to 1024-QAM.
This increases peak data-rates under good conditions TECHNICAL FEATURES OF 802.11AX
(high SNR). The following section deals with the major technical
• OFDM symbols, subcarrier spacing and FFT size are all improvements in detail.
changed to allow efficient operation of small OFDMA sub-
New subcarrier spacing and symbol duration
channels: these changes allow an increase in the length of
The OFDM symbol is the basic building-block of a Wi-Fi
guard interval without loss of symbol efficiency.
transmission. It is a small segment in time of the modulated
• Outdoor Operation: A number of features improve
waveform of a subcarrier, carrying information: the more
outdoor performance. The most important is a new
variants of a symbol are available, the more information
packet format where the most sensitive field is now
(binary bits) it can carry. The fundamental characteristics:
repeated for robustness. Other features that contribute
fast Fourier transform (FFT) size, subcarrier spacing and
to better outdoor operation include longer guard intervals
OFDM symbol duration are linked, given a fixed channel
and modes that introduce redundancy to allow for error
width. In 802.11ax, the subcarrier spacing is reduced by a
recovery.
factor of 4x while the OFDM symbol duration increases by 4x.
• Reduced Power Consumption: Existing power-save
modes are supplemented with new mechanisms allowing
longer sleep intervals and scheduled wake times. Also, for
IoT devices, a 20MHz-channel-only mode is introduced,
allowing for simpler, less powerful chips that support only
that mode.

Figure 6: Wi-Fi Standards Progression

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Table 1: OFDM characteristics from 802.11ac to 802.11ax

Figure 7: OFDM symbol duration & subcarriers

The primary impetus for a change in subcarrier spacing was There are, of course, some side effects. The frequency
to allow OFDMA (see later) to extend to small sub-channels. accuracy required to successfully demodulate more
Each sub-channel requires at least one (usually two) pilot closely‑spaced subcarriers is more stringent. Also, the
subcarriers, and with a 2 MHz minimum sub-channel size, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) requires a slightly more
smaller subcarrier spacing loses a much smaller percentage complex chip. But since it has been around 20 years since
of the overall bandwidth to pilots. the 312.5 kHz / 64 point FFT was first used in 802.11, these
effects are considered manageable.
There are other advantages. The number of guard and null
subcarriers across a channel can be reduced as a percentage OFDMA advantages
of the number of usable subcarriers, again increasing the Orthogonal frequency division multiple-access (OFDMA) is
effective data rate in a given channel. The figures above show one of two multi-user modes in 802.11ax, the other being
a ~10% increase in usable subcarriers compared to 802.11ac, MU-MIMO (downlink-only in wave 1). OFDMA is a technique
after allowing for the 4x factor. that has been used in other systems, like cellular-LTE, for
The longer OFDM symbol allows for an increase in the many years. It works by dividing a transmission across the
cyclic prefix length without sacrificing spectral efficiency, frequency dimension, with pairs of devices assigned to
which in turn enables increased immunity to long delay transmit and receive in sub-channels or Resource Units (RU’s)
spreads, especially in outdoor conditions. The cyclic prefix of the main RF channel.
can be reduced to a smaller percentage of the symbol time,
increasing spectral efficiency even while more robust to
multipath conditions. And it reduces the jitter-sensitivity of
uplink multi-user modes.

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Figure 8: OFDMA compared with single-user OFDM

This allows an access point (for downlink OFDMA) to bundle There are also advantages for less-capable stations. As
several frames together in different sub-channels in a link‑speeds have increased, some devices struggle to
single transmit opportunity, while its clients tune their transmit at the maximum rates. Whereas with full-channel
radios to different sub-channels to receive their respective OFDM, they have to do the best they can, perhaps not filling
transmissions. the medium, OFDMA allows them to cap their maximum
rates. This allows for simpler hardware implementations and
At first glance, OFDMA offers no advantage over full-channel
potentially longer battery life, similar to the 20 MHz-only (see
single-user OFDM (which is still available in 802.11ax). Given
later) concept for IoT sensors.
that the transmit link-speeds do not differ, when considering
a long time-period covering many transmissions, each station OFDMA also offers opportunities for applying QoS,
transmits the same amount of data: when OFDMA allocates particularly for traffic that demands low latency or jitter.
1/2 of the channel, the transmission takes 2x the time and While a device might have to wait a long while in a single-user
nothing is saved. However, a closer examination shows a OFDM system for a transmit opportunity, OFDMA allows it to
number of efficiency improvements. transmit ‘little and often’, reducing latency and jitter.

In the 802.11 CSMA/CA channel access protocol, each But OFDMA brings some subtlety. As can be seen above,
transmit opportunity negotiation loses time to contention. the frame-by-frame transmission of 802.11 requires that,
That is time lost on the medium, reducing overall capacity when the access point contends for a transmit opportunity,
and spectral efficiency. When OFDMA is used, transmissions it must bundle up a number of frames of different lengths.
are bundled together, reducing the number of transmit Where frames are shorter than the length of the transmit
opportunities necessary to move a given amount of data, and opportunity, padding is added and this, of course, is
increasing efficiency. Also, CSMA/CA becomes less efficient as usable bandwidth lost. Also, as hinted earlier, each OFDMA
the number of clients increases—if 5 clients can achieve 100 sub‑channel must reserve one or two subcarriers for pilot
Mbps each, 50 would not be able to achieve 10 Mbps—and tones, unusable for data transmission. So the access point
one goal of 802.11ax is to improve performance in large‑scale must calculate the optimum use of OFDMA, taking into
deployments with dense client populations. OFDMA is account its offered load and the frames in its buffers, as well
especially useful in managing large numbers of clients fairly, as client distribution and link-speeds.
and the reduction in contention overhead means there is
little deterioration in capacity as client numbers increase.

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OFDMA thus opens up many new dimensions to traffic sub‑channel to the frame, so it takes longer to transmit, but
management, but it also requires more sophisticated control then more frames must be added to the bundle to use the
mechanisms, as the access point must choose how to full channel bandwidth.
allocate sub-channels, and coordinate with its clients on use;
The smallest allocated sub-channel in 802.11ax is 26
more on these later.
subcarriers (2 MHz). There are 9 available 26-subcarrier
Downlink OFDMA sub-channels in a 20 MHz channel, allowing up to 9 different
frames and recipients to share a transmission.
802.11ax introduces OFDMA in both the downlink and uplink
directions. There are some differences: since the access point The IEEE uses the term “Resource Unit” (RU) to refer to
is in control of all transmissions for downlink OFDMA, it may sub‑channels. The 26-subcarrier unit above is known as
be simpler to implement. RU‑26, for example: the full set is RU-26, RU-52, RU-106,
RU‑242, RU-484, and RU-996.
Dealing first with downlink OFDMA transmission, and leaving
control till later, we see that an access point first contends Allocated sub-channels
for a transmission opportunity in the usual way. It then
In OFDMA, uplink or downlink, sub-channels are defined in
assembles a number of frames for different clients, but
the standard. Channels are sub-divided in binary fashion,
modulated over the allocated sub-channels.
with the 26-subcarrier smallest block being used to fill holes
When a frame is shorter than the longest frame of the where the channel does not divide exactly.
bundle, padding is added to bring the length up. This
lost bandwidth can be reduced by allocating a smaller

Figure 9: Downlink OFDMA transmission

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Figure 10: Sub-channel allocation for OFDMA

As in prior generations of OFDM, not all subcarriers in sub‑channels. Others are used for DC or pilot tones,
a channel can be used for data. Some subcarriers are to provide a frequency reference and allow accurate
unused for guard-band purposes, so as not to interfere demodulation of the signals.
with transmissions in adjacent channels, or between

Figure 11: Sub-channel allocation for OFDMA

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Usable sub-channels, subcarriers and data-rates for around but only in certain configurations as specified in
OFDMA 802.11ax.
The table below lists the menu of options for RU-N
(e.g. RU‑26) sub-channels in OFDMA. These RU’s can move

Table 2: Usable sub-channels, subcarriers and data-rates for OFDMA

Uplink OFDMA waveforms are synchronized in time, frequency and

OFDMA works in the uplink direction much as for the amplitude when received at the AP’s antennas. This has
downlink, except that the client devices transmit and the driven a number of new requirements for Wi-Fi devices
access point receives. including calibrating signal strength measurements, local
oscillator requirements and others, which may be useful in
The difficult functions are for the access point to calculate the
other areas.
best grouping of clients, and then to signal when each should
transmit, and on which sub-channel. More on that later. Even within an OFDMA packet body, it is very important that
the transmitter maintains frequency accuracy, transmitter
Also, synchronization of preamble symbols in the uplink
linearity and other parameters to avoid causing interference
direction is complex because each preamble is transmitted
to transmissions in adjacent RU’s: implementation of
across a full 20 MHz channel. This was an implementation
OFDMA is more complex than the simple diagrams above
decision in the IEEE, and it requires that all preamble
would indicate.

Figure 12: Uplink OFDMA transmission

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Downlink multi-user MIMO transmission In order to identify candidates for MU-MIMO, the AP
Downlink MU-MIMO was introduced in 802.11ac (wave 2) performs sounding operations, sending null frames from
and is becoming widespread in current access points and all its antennas to clients, which then return responses with
client devices. It extends concepts of spatial diversity and matrices of the measured receive levels for each AP-antenna
beamforming to support simultaneous transmission from an to client-antenna pair. Sounding is used for beamforming
AP to a number of clients. as well as MIMO. Multi-user sounding in 802.11ac could
be time consuming because the beamforming report
matrix can be large, and the client devices had to stagger
their responses to avoid interference: the new 802.11ax
multi‑user control protocol makes it much more efficient with
simultaneous responses.

Figure 13: Downlink multi-user MIMO transmission

MU-MIMO is only possible where propagation characteristics

allow the AP to identify that a transmission optimized for
one client or group of clients will not be heard at a significant
signal strength by another client, and vice versa. These are
the conditions that allow it to build separate data frames for
each client group, and transmit them simultaneously.

Figure 14: Downlink Sounding

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Figure 15: Sounding—beamforming explicit feedback

Experience with 802.11ac MU-MIMO in real-world Uplink MU-MIMO and combined MU-MIMO and OFDMA
deployments revealed some limitations. For instance, it was Both uplink MU-MIMO, and packets that combine OFDMA
not always possible to form usable groups, and even with a and MU-MIMO are deferred to wave 2. Even downlink
4-antenna AP, gains over single-user mode were sometimes OFDMA and MU-MIMO together are not supported in wave 1,
modest: in 802.11ax, the larger MU-MIMO groups (increased although the combination opens even more possibilities for
from 4 to 8 clients) will allow considerable improvement. the AP scheduler.
As can be seen from the diagram above, 802.11ax can
accommodate large numbers of client devices by grouping Packet preambles
clients and dealing with groups sequentially. The example In the 802.11 protocol, packet preambles contain information
shows grouping of clients for beamforming reports, but the for the receiver to synchronize to the incoming signal,
concept is also extended to other packet types. and identify the sub-channels and format of the packet to
follow. The information below is encoded by the PHY layer of
And any link- or transport-level protocol like TCP/IP that
the transmitter.
includes acks will gain from the improved downlink
performance but may still be bottlenecked by the uplink:
this will be solved when uplink MU-MIMO is added in
802.11ax wave 2.

Figure 16: Preambles and training sequences

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The 802.11ax frame starts with the ‘legacy’ preamble for Packet tail—padding, tail bits and packet extension
backwards-compatibility: these fields have been used since The new structures and applications of 802.11ax mean some
before 802.11n and allow older devices to recognize there new fields are added to the end of the packet.
is an 802.11 frame on the air. This allows the CSMA/CA
protocol to continue functioning in the presence of 802.11ax
transmissions.

The next field, RL-SIG, would be the beginning of the frame

body in older protocols like 802.11g. It identifies the frame
to follow as 802.11ax rather than pre-802.11n. The ‘legacy’
Figure 17: Padding, tail bits and packet extension
preamble and RL-SIG field are transmitted in parallel in all
20‑MHz sub-channels used for subsequent transmissions,
for backwards-compatibility. Padding may be added after the packet payload. It is
required when OFDMA is used and the frame, as built by the
The subsequent fields are used for 802.11ax purposes (‘HE’
transmitter, is not quite long enough to fill the negotiated
is ‘High Efficiency’, the IEEE 802.11 name for 802.11ax) and
transmit opportunity. The calculations to determine optimal
use a mix of symbol formats, with ‘legacy’ modulation used
bandwidth utilization are performed by the AP, and it varies
for low‑rate fields and for backwards compatibility, while
the sub-channel, MCS rate and transmit power for the frames
other fields use the new, close subcarrier spacing and longer
grouped in a transmission to ensure that all transmissions
OFDMA symbol of 802.11ax.
start and end simultaneously. This is important because the
First is the HE-SIG-A field, which contains information about other devices on the channel, including pre-802.11ax devices,
the packet to follow, including whether it is downlink or must see signals at a certain power level filling the channel
uplink, BSS color, modulation MCS rate, bandwidth and in order for their CSMA/CA contention mechanisms to work
spatial stream information, and remaining time in the correctly. Padding can be included in the forward error
transmit opportunity. This field has different content for correction (FEC) calculation, or added after the calculation.
single-user, multi-user and trigger-based frames, and is
If the AP is doing a good job (assuming the system is
repeated in the ‘extended range mode’ of 802.11ax.
operating at capacity), very little padding will be used. If it has
The HE-SIG-B field is only included for multi-user packets. It a ‘short’ frame, it can always reduce the MCS rate to improve
has information common to all recipients, and other fields the transmission’s error rate, driving a longer duration.
that are user-specific, so its length depends on the number
Tail bits may be added after the data field. They are only
of users receiving the transmission. When OFDMA is used,
necessary when BCC error correction is used, not for LDPC.
the HE-SIG-B client-specific fields are sent concurrently
This field existed prior to 802.11ax. (Binary convolutional
in each sub-channel used for the subsequent packet
codes (BCC) were used in early 802.11 standards for error
transmission. More on this later.
correction. As data-rates increased, the BCC decoder
The HE-STF training field allows receivers to synchronize became complex, and now higher data-rates use low-density
to the timing and frequency of the incoming frame before parity check (LDPC) coding, a lower-complexity alternative.)
decoding the packet body, while the HE-LTF is important for
The packet extension field may be added at the end of
channel estimation, enabling beamforming and MIMO spatial
the frame. It is used to allow extra time for the receiver to
diversity.
process the frame’s contents before responding with a frame
of its own, recognizing for the first time in 802.11 that some
chips may move certain functions to slower software layers
rather than fast-calculating hardware. A client requiring extra
time to process received frames must signal its requirements
to the AP: the allowed values for packet extension are 0, 4, 8,
12 or 16 usec.

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Packet aggregation
Packet aggregation was introduced in 802.11n and has
become widespread, particularly where streaming video is
carried over Wi-Fi.

Figure 18: MAC Aggregation

The value of MAC aggregation lies in more efficient use of the Downlink and uplink are different: the former has no prior
air, for higher throughput and more capacity. This stems from signaling, the AP just starts to transmit in appropriate modes,
two effects. and receivers synchronize as the packet arrives. But multi-
user uplink traffic requires a special ‘trigger’ frame where the
A-MSDU aggregation requires a full MAC header only on the
AP allocates MU-MIMO groups and OFDMA Resource Units
first packet of the sequence, reducing header overhead. This
to its clients, and informs them of the allocation, and this in
is a significant effect, but eliminating per-packet contention
turn requires that the AP polls clients for their uplink traffic
is bigger: with both A-MSDU and A-MPDU aggregation,
requirements.
the transmitter is able to negotiate a transmit opportunity
covering many packets, greatly reducing contention Downlink multi-user control
overhead. There is no prior signaling for downlink multi-user control:
Packet aggregation is not changed for 802.11ax, but it still all relevant information is contained in the packet header,
plays a significant part in optimizing network capacity. It specifically in the HE-SIG-B field, which is only included in
works in conjunction with MU-MIMO, and with OFDMA: downlink multi-user frames.
for all the OFDMA illustrations in this paper, packets within
sub‑channels will often be aggregated packets.

Control for multi-user modes

802.11ax includes two multi-user modes: MU-MIMO, which
exploits diversity in space, and OFDMA in the frequency
dimension. Both modes allow simultaneous bi-directional
communication between an AP and multiple client devices,
and 802.11ax provides common control mechanisms.

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Figure 19: Control for multi-user downlink modes

The HE-SIG-B is a complex field. It has variable length, The HE-SIG-B fields provide all the information a client device
depending on the number of clients the AP is addressing, needs to discover it is the intended recipient of the frame to
and two different types of information, common and follow, and the information it needs to receive and decode
user‑specific. that frame.

The common field identifies the structure of OFDMA In Figure 20, downlink shows how multi-user frames
sub‑channels or RU’s that will be used, e.g. 18x 26 RU or follow a simple format, no trigger or signaling frames are
2x 242 RU. It includes other information that is common to all necessary. However, it becomes more difficult to manage
transmissions. acknowledgements, as these are uplink transmissions and,
in multi-user mode, require coordination and a trigger frame
A number of user-specific fields follow the common field.
from the AP.
The AP uses these fields to identify exactly how it will
be transmitting to each client, including the number of Options for the trigger frame are BlockAck request (MU-BAR),
spatial streams, the MCS it will use and whether it will buffer status report (BSRP), bandwidth query report (BQRP)
use beamforming. and uplink multi-user response scheduling control fields in
the basic packet preamble.
The 802.11ax specification requires the transmitter to
form the HE-SIG-B field simultaneously in multiple 20 MHz
channels, taking up the total bandwidth of the allocated
channel. Thus, if the AP is using an 80 MHz channel, it will
transmit 4 HE-SIG-B fields, one in each 20 MHz subchannel.

Figure 20: Control for multi-user downlink modes

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Figure 21: Control for multi-user downlink modes

BlockAck’s can be used in conjunction with downlink MU Uplink multi-user control

modes, allowing a set of MU BlockAck’s to be deferred to The uplink is more complicated than the downlink, as the AP
the end of a group of downlink data frames, transmitted in first has to discover what traffic clients are ready to transmit.
the same transmit opportunity up to the TXOP limit of 4.096 Following this, it must calculate the optimum allocation
msec. This minimizes the overhead from contention and of MU-MIMO groups and OFDMA RU’s, then signal the
multiple Ack’s. allocation information to its clients and synchronize them to
transmit simultaneously.
(802.11ac introduced downlink multi-user MIMO, but had
no uplink multi-user mode, so recipients of a downlink
MU transmission had to ack one after the other, wasting
time on the air. The 802.11ax approach is an improvement
on 802.11ac.)

Figure 22: Control for multi-user uplink modes

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The trigger frame format is shown above. It contains the • Multi-user BlockAck Request (MU-BAR): This trigger
following information. frame requests a BlockAck from multiple client devices
simultaneously. User Info fields specify the frames that
• The length of the uplink transmission window
• Which client devices are to transmit are to be Ack’d.
• Multi-user Request To Send (MU-RTS): This trigger
• Which OFDMA RU’s are to be used by each client device
frame is used to clear the air before a transmission, in the
• How many spatial streams are to be used by each
same way as single-user RTS-CTS.
client device
• Buffer Status Report Poll (BSRP): This trigger frame
• Which MCS modulation level is to be used by each
allows the AP to find what traffic client devices have
client device
• Whether functions like STBC are to be used on the uplink queued to transmit, allowing the AP to schedule uplink
traffic efficiently.
• Required signal strength at the AP for the client’s
• Bandwidth Query Report Poll (BQRP): This trigger frame
transmission (this is calculated by the client using the AP’s
requests client devices to report on the occupancy of
transmit power level, the client’s receive RSSI level and an
20 MHz RF channels, allowing the AP to control uplink
assumption of channel reciprocity)
channel use efficiently.
• (Uplink MU-MIMO is deferred to wave 2, but all the
• Group Cast with Retries multi-user BlockAck Request
necessary fields are already defined in the 802.11ax
(GCR MU-BAR): This intimidating frame is used when the
standard.)
AP is building a multicast group and solicits a BlockAck
This is a very versatile frame because it can be concatenated
from each member of the group.
with several other functions, as listed below.
A trigger frame of some kind is required any time an AP
• Basic Trigger frame: This has no extra functions. It
wishes to initiate a set of uplink multi-user frames.
specifies how and when client devices should respond.
• Beamforming Report Poll (BRP): This solicits
beamforming reports from client devices. User Info fields
specify how the beamforming report is formatted. There is
no Common field in this frame.

Figure 23: Control for multi-user uplink modes

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The trigger frame is used to map clients to their respective AP scheduling for 802.11ax multi-user modes
OFDMA RU’s and MU-MIMO groups, and includes timing and With the addition of OFDMA and uplink MU-MIMO, the AP
MCS modulation-rate information, as well as transmit-power must perform additional functions not required in previous
guidance. generations of 802.11. Scheduling of the downlink and
uplink traffic becomes critical for optimal performance in a
At the designated time, client devices start transmitting in
heavily‑loaded system.
their assigned RU’s or MIMO groups.

The AP usually transmits an acknowledgement frame

following uplink data frames. This can be either a multi-user
transmission individually addressing clients with block-ack
(BA) frames, or a new ‘multi-STA BlockAck’ frame contained in
a pre-802.11ax, or an 802.11ax frame.

Figure 24: AP scheduling for downlink multi-user modes

When 802.11ac introduced downlink MU-MIMO, the AP took But the uplink is even more complicated. Even though
on the task of monitoring its buffers of downlink traffic and uplink MU-MIMO will be deferred to 802.11ax wave 2, uplink
deciding how to group the various packets to make best OFDMA will be a significant feature of the initial wave of
use of the distribution of MU-MIMO groups across its client 802.11ax equipment. Multi-user operation requires the AP
population. Sometimes it would be optimal to reach into to learn of its clients’ buffer states and traffic streams, then
the buffers to fill out a transmission group, for instance. make equivalent calculations to the uplink, then signal and
Identifying groups becomes more complex in 802.11ax: coordinate uplink multi-user transmissions for optimum
taking account of signal strength (near-far distance from the system performance.
AP) may improve efficiency gains, and in the future, as data
This function is already used in cellular systems, where base
from real-world deployments accumulates, there will be
stations incorporate considerable expertise and intellectual
opportunities for big-data and machine-learning to analyze
property in their scheduler algorithms. We should expect to
performance and improve scheduling algorithms.
see similar developments in 802.11ax APs.
With OFDMA, the downlink traffic-grooming problem gains a
new dimension: now the AP must look ahead in its buffers,
take account of both MU-MIMO groups and OFDMA channels
(and which of its clients are 802.11ax-capable) and re-order
and group packets.

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Figure 25: Downlink-Uplink multi-user cascading frame exchanges

The most efficient multi-user scheme available to the AP The 802.11ax standard keeps the upper limit of 8 antennas,
cascades uplink and downlink sets of multi-user frames, and it is quite likely that, in the same way that 5G is
multiplexed in space with MU-MIMO (downlink only in wave embracing ‘massive MIMO’, there will be opportunities to
1) and OFDMA as shown above. The downlink packets build innovative 802.11ax products with up to 8 antennas.
include Ack’s and triggers, and the uplink are trigger-based Benefits beyond MU-MIMO include beamforming and MRC
frames which also carry Ack’s, and all are controlled and with more antennas, and more efficient spatial grouping of
orchestrated by the AP. 1‑ and 2-antenna client devices by the AP.

It is interesting that the new multi-user modes in 802.11ax, High-density AP and client situations, performance-sensitive
along with efficient scheduling by the AP, allow a Wi-Fi applications and point-to-point links are some of the possible
system to act in a near-cellular (TDD + TDM/TDMA + OFDMA) scenarios. There will still be high-volume production access
fashion. The AP can schedule consecutive multi-user transmit points for consumer and enterprise use with 4 antennas or
opportunities for uplink and downlink and, with appropriate fewer, but these will now be mid-range products.
traffic, the per-packet overhead associated with prior
It seems less likely that clients will increase their antenna
802.11 protocols becomes so small as to nearly disappear.
count. Many smartphones and tablets support 2 spatial
Meanwhile the scaling of client numbers and granularity of
streams, and this seems adequate for their performance
OFDMA bandwidth assignment allows a very broad range of
needs: the gains from extra antennas will be in the overall
client-density and traffic scenarios to be accommodated.
capacity an AP can support: more clients at higher data‑rates
8-antenna access points and client devices than before.

The 802.11ac standard extended to 8 the maximum specified High-order modulation

number of antennas an access point or client could use. In
It is now traditional for a new 802.11 physical-layer
the event, while there are many 4-antenna 802.11ac access
amendment to bump up the highest modulation level, and
points, no equipment vendors have ventured beyond 4.
802.11ax adds two 1024-QAM rates on top of 802.11ac.

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Figure 26: 1024-QAM modulation

The move from 256-QAM to 1024-QAM increases the number The chart below shows that the receive power level required
of bits carried per OFDM symbol from 8 to 10, for a data‑rate to decode an 80 MHz, 1024-QAM 5/6, MCS-11) frame is close
and spectral-efficiency boost of 25%. But, as before, the to -45 dBm, a very high level. This emphasizes how some
improvement only works for the cleanest conditions, where 802.11ax rate tables are shown below (160 MHz channels are
the signal level is high and the noise low. This is because the just 2x 80 MHz).
receiver has to make a decision about the modulation level,
The first table shows data-rates for 20, 40, 80 MHz channels
choosing one of 32 states along each axis (amplitude and
(in Mbps, with short guard interval).
phase or quadrature) rather than one of 16 for 256-QAM or
one of 8 for 64-QAM.

Figure 27: 802.11ax receive sensitivity requirements

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Table 3: 802.11ax selected rates (Mbps, short GI)

(The maximum rate for a 160 MHz channel with 8x SS and MCS 11 is now 9607.8 Mbps.)

And the table below shows data-rates for sub-channels (in Mbps, with short guard interval).

Table 4: 802.11ax selected rates (Mbps, short GI)

Transmit power control in multi-user mode As a result of the sounding procedure, an AP learns how its
Multi-user modes in 802.11ax allow much more control over clients are receiving its signals, which allows it to estimate the
transmit power levels, and most of the control lies at the AP. path loss and RF channel conditions. Thus it can adjust its
This should be useful for clients’ battery life, and for limiting transmit power to target a particular signal level at the client,
co-channel interference as, for example, clients currently or more often, a signal-to-noise-and-interference (SINR) level.
tend to transmit at maximum power even though APs may Since MCS and error rates are related to SINR, it can choose
be on reduced power in a dense multi-AP deployment, to optimize by reducing the error level, or increasing the MCS
increasing the interference radius. and/or transmit power to increase data rates and reduce
time on the air.

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One interesting possibility is to increase the power standards: these remain, and are supplemented with a new
transmitted in certain OFDMA RU’s, while reducing that used mechanism, ‘target wait time’ (TWT). (TWT was introduced
in others. This is interesting because it opens an opportunity in 802.11ah, the amendment for low-power, long-range IoT
for ‘water-filling’, a technique to allocate resources to transmission; but since 802.11ah chips and devices have not
the most-effective recipient, but also allows the AP to been widely adopted by the market, it is new to users of Wi-Fi
transmit above the allowed power levels (EIRP) for certain equipment.) TWT is particularly useful for battery-powered
sub-carriers, while reducing power on others. So long as devices that communicate infrequently.
the overall EIRP on a 20 MHz channel is within limits, this
The existing ‘legacy PS’ mechanism has been in use since
configuration would be allowed by regulation.
802.11b, the first widely-used Wi-Fi standard. Clients can
With the new multi-user signaling mechanisms, the AP can sleep between AP beacons, or multiples of beacons, waking
now control the client’s transmit characteristics. In wave when they have data to transmit (they can transmit at any
1 this is only applicable to OFDMA, but in wave 2, uplink time, the AP does not sleep) and for beacons containing the
MU‑MIMO will be controlled as well. The fields controlling delivery traffic information map (DTIM), a bit-map indicating
uplink multi-user operation allow the AP to specify the that the AP has downlink data buffered for transmission
transmit power indirectly, as a desired SINR at the AP, which to particular clients. If the DTIM bit is set for a client, it
the client can derive from the sounding estimate of path loss. can retrieve its data by sending a trigger frame to the AP
But more than that, the AP specifies the number of spatial immediately after the beacon. PS is an effective mechanism
streams to use, the MCS, the OFDMA RU and other features but only allows clients to sleep for a small number of beacon
that should be used. The AP may do this to optimize packing intervals, usually clients must wake several times per second
of an OFDMA packet, but alternatively it could seek to reduce to read the DTIM.
the transmit power used by particular clients, for battery life
As explicit voice-over-Wi-Fi support was added with 802.11e,
or interference optimization purposes.
the IEEE recognized that voice-capable devices required a
Power-save mechanisms in 802.11ax new power save mechanism, as voice packets are transmitted
at short time intervals, typically 20 msec. Unscheduled
One of the goals of the 802.11ax project is to improve
automatic power-save delivery (U-APSD) allows a client to
performance by a factor of 4x while keeping power
sleep at intervals within a beacon period. As in PS, the AP
requirements unchanged or improved. With the emerging
buffers downlink traffic until the client wakes and requests it.
IoT market, power-save mechanisms at the other end of
With symmetrical traffic like voice, the client can often send
the performance scale were also a particular focus. Several
and receive frames in the same waking interval.
power-save mechanisms already exist in prior 802.11

Figure 28: Power-save options before 802.11ax

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Figure 29: TWT power-save options in 802.11ax

The new TWT mechanism in 802.11ax allows more flexible, • The uplink/downlink bit identifies the frame as transmitted
long-term and even multi-client sleeping arrangements. by and AP or client device. It is included in every
First, a negotiation between the client and AP sets up an preamble. This is useful because client devices do not
agreed schedule for the client to wake and communicate. The need to receive frames from other clients, and can switch
schedule is often periodic, with a long, multi-beacon interval off their radio circuitry as soon as they see an ‘uplink’ bit in
(minutes, perhaps hours or days) between activities. When a preamble.
its designated time arrives, the client wakes, awaits a polling • The 20 MHz-only option allows new designs for
trigger frame from the AP (required in multi-user mode) stripped‑down chips optimized for long battery life. It also
and exchanges data, subsequently returning to the sleep offers a lower-power mode for mainstream Wi-Fi chips in
state. Since the AP negotiates separately with each client, specialized equipment.
it can group or separate scheduled transmissions in order • Multi-user signaling allows the AP to indicate to
to achieve best traffic efficiency or to accommodate traffic clients what signal strength it needs to see on their
requirements from other clients. transmissions, and to specify an MCS to be used. If the AP
has knowledge of its clients, it can optimize these settings
The standard allows several variations of the individual TWT
for power-constrained devices.
described above. Multicast traffic, that many clients wish to
• The BSS-coloring feature allows clients to stop receiving
receive, can be set up by the AP on a schedule published
a frame and return to sleep mode as soon as they
in beacons. Opportunistic power save allows the AP to
recognize the frame is not of interest to them. This is a
publish a schedule of intervals when any client can wake
wave 2 feature (see appendix).
and request a packet exchange, even within OFDMA. And
• ‘Receive operating mode’ and ‘Transmit operating mode’
there are mechanisms for unassociated clients to learn when
allow clients to reduce the number of active transmit and
information they might be interested in will be broadcast.
receive chains they use for data transmission, as well as
Various multi-user modes can also be used with TWT, making the channel width. A client can use this to reduce the
some options rather complicated. But the straightforward peak power requirement for sending and receiving data.
goal is to enable flexible and long-term sleep intervals. Although lower data-rates will mean the transmission
802.11ax is very power-aware: in addition to TWT, it has many time is extended, this can be a worthwhile saving for an
other features that can extend the battery life of IoT sensors IoT sensor.
and other clients.

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20 MHz-only operation 802.11ax seeks to reduce complexity by opening the door

Since 802.11ax was developed in the IoT era, it offers more for a new class of chip. This will lead to very beneficial
than a nod towards low-cost, battery-powered client devices. consequences if the vendors take their lead from the IEEE
Wi-Fi chip shipments number in the billions per year, allowing and build this new class of Wi-Fi chip.
manufacturers to bring unit costs down to very low points A 20 MHz-only device is capable of operating in either the
for such sophisticated chips, but Wi-Fi remains a more 2.4 or the 5 GHz band, but only in 20 MHz at a time, on the
expensive option for an IoT sensor compared to some of the designated primary channel. But nearly all other mandatory
alternatives such as Bluetooth or Zigbee. And Wi-Fi chips are
features of 802.11ax apply, including OFDMA options, allowing
several times more power-hungry.
such a device to transmit and receive on a much smaller
Over the years, several specialist chip vendors have brought sub-channel. Of course, the 20 MHz channel cap limits the
out modified 802.11 chips for IoT applications (for example, data-rates that can be supported, but this should not be an
Wi-Fi asset tags) which minimized power requirements in as issue for an IoT application.
many ways as possible, but the market for these special chips
(Access points must support the full 20 MHz channels in the
was low-volume and the designs were constrained by the
2.4 GHz band and 20, 40 and 80 MHz channels at 5 GHz to
need to interoperate with other Wi-Fi equipment including be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance: 20 MHz-only applies just to
access points.
client devices.)
So the developers of 802.11ax, many of whom are employed
at chip vendors, sought to close these gaps in complexity
and battery-life in the new standard in several ways. The new
TWT protocol for power-save should allow Wi-Fi-based IoT
sensors to operate at a considerably lower power draw: this
will narrow the gap on battery life, but the complexity and
footprint of Wi-Fi chips leave them at a disadvantage for very
low-cost sensors.

Figure 30: 20 MHz-only operation

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USAGE MODELS: WHAT CAN WE DO WITH 802.11AX?

802.11ax business benefits 802.11ax major use cases

• Increased aggregate network throughput • IAirports and stations

• Increased rate at range • Education
• Peak link throughput increase • Shopping mall
• Reduced overhead • Wireless office
• Increased efficiency in dense networks • Smart cars
• Increased robustness outdoors • Stadium
• Reduced power consumption • Smart cities
• Enhanced Wi-Fi coexistence • Dense apartment buildings
• Dense suburban homes

Figure 31: Usage models

Dense deployments and overlapping access points Along with its lower-power requirements, IoT will certainly
Improved performance in dense networks is perhaps increase the number of Wi-Fi devices in a home, office
the primary goal of 802.11ax. Dense networks can take building or even retail store. Several features in 802.11ax
different forms: large numbers of clients in a small area, or extend the number of client devices that can be associated
closely-spaced access points, and sometimes overlapping with an access point, and more important, the amount of
access points that may have common or entirely separate simultaneous active clients. In particular, OFDMA allows the
management. The new standard and certification offer frequency domain to be sliced much thinner, favoring large
solutions for all these scenarios. numbers of devices with low data-rates and long sleep-times,
one definition of IoT.
For an isolated access point with small numbers of high-rate
clients, 802.11ax supports increased data-rates and improved Long-range, outdoor operation
multi-user MIMO operation for simultaneous transmissions The outdoor point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and mesh
wherever possible. Where data streams include many short markets are often overshadowed by the home and business
frames, multi-user OFDMA enables much lower contention WLAN segments, but they represent sizeable and consistent
and preamble overhead. markets for Wi-Fi equipment, and will benefit from several
When access points overlap, spatial re-use through BSS improvements in 802.11ax.
coloring reduces the common-channel interference radius of Moreover, one of the more significant targets of the 5G
an access point, improving simultaneous transmission across project from the cellular world is ‘fixed wireless access’ (FWA)
a wide area, and hence network capacity. where wireless mesh networks deliver broadband Internet
And OFDMA and multi-user uplink control from the access service to the home in urban and rural settings. This market
point should drive performance improvements in situations requires long-reach links, high data-rates and low-cost
where client populations are heterogeneous with varying equipment: 802.11ax improves on the first two, and the third
data-rate and frame-length. has always been one of Wi-Fi’s strengths. Indeed, early FWA
entrants are touting their equipment as ‘pre-standard 5G’
Low-power, large-scale: Internet of Things when in fact they are using frequency-shifted 802.11ac: with
Whether or not it is called ‘IoT’, the industry is looking 802.11ax the case for using Wi-Fi chips will be even stronger.
forward to a much wider range of Wi-Fi connected clients in It is hoped that the improvements in long-range outdoor
the 802.11ax era. It is hoped that the power-saving features operation in 802.11ax will spur greater penetration of this and
in the new certification, particularly TWT, 20 MHz-only, even other new markets.
some of the multi-user control functions and OFDMA will
all contribute to extending battery life far enough to make
inroads into the emerging IoT market.

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BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY, DEPLOYMENT This allows different strategies when upgrading an 802.11n or
CONSIDERATIONS AND UPGRADE STRATEGIES 802.11ac WLAN to 802.11x. Some may like to intersperse new
Wi-Fi can boast a near-flawless backwards-compatibility APs in a salt-and-pepper topology, while others may upgrade
record. Thanks to the legacy training fields in every packet a whole floor or corner of a building at one time. Either
preamble, even 15 year-old 802.11g equipment is able will work.
to decode 802.11ax frames. While the 802.11n standard The increased sustained throughput of an 802.11ax AP may
included an optional ‘greenfield’ mode, it was never also prompt a backhaul upgrade. While many APs support
implemented in shipping equipment, and since then there dual 1 Gbps Ethernet connections, the move to 2.5 and
have been no ‘greenfield’ options. 5 Gbps Ethernet seems to be attractive over the long term.
Even the extended-range outdoor features, which because of
dual-beacons and other special frames will be incompatible
with older equipment, will be protected by co-locating a
‘legacy’ AP beacon.

MANDATORY AND OPTIONAL FEATURES

Table 5: 802.11ax major features: mandatory and optional

802.11ax wave 1 and wave 2 In this paper we have taken the wave 2 features and moved
It is already established that 802.1ax will roll out with wave 1 them to an appendix, as they probably will not be seen in the
and wave 2, but the exact split of features has not been field until 2020.
frozen. This is the current view at the time of writing (early
Wi-Fi Alliance certifications for 802.11ax
2018).
As of early 2018, the Wi-Fi Alliance plans to certify four
Table 6: 802.11ax wave 1 and wave 2 features
different types of equipment under the ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED AX’
certification (these plans are subject to change, certification
is expected to launch in mid-2019).

• Wave 1 AP: This would be the access points we are

familiar with in residential or enterprise environments.
• Wave 1 client device: The usual client in smartphones,
PCs and other consumer and enterprise devices.

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• Mobile AP: The certification for 802.11ac included a It is well-known that the total data-throughput of an access
special option for lower-power, smaller devices that point falls as the number of client devices increases. This is
include AP functionality, and 802.11ax continues explained by contention overhead: as the number of clients
to include the category. It applies primarily to competing for a transmit opportunity increases, the average
battery‑powered, mobile access points where wait also increases, and the amount of air-time used for data
functionality and performance can be limited. Mobile transmission decreases.
APs do not need the ‘Agile Multiband’ certification, and
The graph above shows network capacity increasing at first,
many of the requirements around OFDMA and MIMO
as when the client count is low, they cannot fill the available
are relaxed, allowing Mobile APs to be single-stream
bandwidth. Once past this threshold, capacity falls by as
devices with data-rates up to MCS5. Mobile APs can be
much as 40% when 100 clients are present, and the trend
2.4 GHz‑only, or dual-band, but if dual-band they must
continues beyond that. The orange series shows that Aruba’s
support 20, 40 and 80 MHz channels.
models predict a significant improvement after 802.11ax.
• 20 MHz only client device: This category opens the
(This, and subsequent graphs are measured for 2x SS
door to the IoT sensor market. Again, many features
operation).
that are mandatory for standard client devices become
optional, allowing simpler devices that have longer
battery life but lower functionality.

PERFORMANCE ESTIMATES
While 802.11ax is not explicitly targeting peak data-rates,
overall aggregate performance is the most important goal.
To this end, the following section offers some explanations
of current challenges in Wi-Fi performance, along with
projections of how performance is expected to improve.

Large numbers of clients

Figure 32: Network (BSS) capacity vs number of clients

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Short packets

Figure 33: Network (BSS) capacity vs packet length

As packet length decreases, the preamble and contention 802.11ax includes a number of measures to improve this
overhead stays constant, per-packet. This increases the reduction of capacity with small packet sizes: the orange
overhead and decreases the overall access point capacity. series above shows the results of Aruba’s models.

Narrow channels (OFDMA)

Figure 34: Capacity vs channel width

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It is generally accepted that, for highest aggregate again with OFDMA in both directions in 802.11ax. Simulations
throughput, a dense WLAN with many APs and clients in indicate that MU-MIMO is most effective with long packets
a small area should be configured for large numbers of 20 and high SNR, while OFDMA is effective over the whole range
MHz channels, rather than fewer 40 or 80 MHz channels. of client densities and packet length distributions.
This is partly because of the co-channel interference issue
Power-saving and battery-life
addressed by BSS coloring, but also because it reduces the
number of client devices per AP and minimizes overhead. Simulations predict that use of TWT, especially in conjunction
OFDMA can be seen as a continuation of this trend, and we with 20 MHz-only operation and OFDMA will enable
expect it to contribute to system-level improvements in data prolonged battery-life. Some estimates suggest Wi-Fi sensor
capacity through a number of mechanisms. battery life could approach Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE),
although this is conjecture until chips are shipped and
The graph above is not technically consistent – the increased equipment is built and tested.
capacity afforded by OFDMA is not quite the same as the
small-channel trend, but it serves to illustrate the effect of Spectral efficiency of 802.11 over the years, bps/Hz
OFDMA on network capacity. With the recent interest in LTE and 5G waveforms in
unlicensed spectrum, the topic of spectral efficiency—the
MIMO and multi-user effects
data-rate that can be achieved per Hz of spectrum—has
The capability to transmit data simultaneously from or
enjoyed renewed interest.
to different antennas and devices is very powerful. First
introduced with single-user MIMO in 802.11n, it was extended Wi-Fi has a strong record in spectral efficiency, although
with downlink multi-user MIMO in 802.11ac wave 2, and as can be seen below, the figure is heavily dependent on
MIMO effects.

Figure 35: Historical spectral efficiency of 802.11, bps/Hz

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CHANNELIZATION
The available RF channels in most countries have not
changed very much since 802.11ac was introduced: in the
USA, the FCC announced changes in 2014 that now allow
outdoor operation in the 5150-5250 MHz band, and lift the
temporary ban on operation at 5600-5650 MHz, subject to a
modified DFS test.

But, with an eye to the future, the Wi-Fi industry is taking

several initiatives to lobby for more unlicensed spectrum that
could be used by Wi-Fi.

Figure 36: Available 5 GHz Channels for 802.11ax (USA)

CONCLUSION low-cost, small-footprint chips. Wi-Fi’s first assault on this

The coming years hold much promise for Wi-Fi, but also market was ‘extended range ah’ (based on IEEE 802.11ah).
great uncertainty. 802.11ax is the Wi-Fi industry’s response It is a comprehensive standard, but has been stalled for
to these opportunities and challenges, to take us through some years: for a number of reasons the chipmakers are
the next five years from 2019 to 2024 and the next not making ‘ah’ chips. As a result, Wi-Fi risks missing a large
802.11 amendment. segment of the IoT market. Several features in 802.11ax make
it more attractive for IoT, but it remains to be seen whether
Wi-Fi chips are shipping at a rate of 3 billion a year, with an
Wi-Fi will win a significant footprint in this market.
installed base of 8 billion. Every smartphone and PC comes
with a Wi-Fi chip, every broadband home Internet connection Meanwhile, regulatory changes are progressing. As a specific
terminates on Wi-Fi, the technology is established in outdoor example, the ‘citizens broadband radio service’ (CBRS)
point-to-point links and making inroads into the automotive initiative from the USA’s FCC offers a lightly-licensed band
industry and connected factories. where it was—at one time—hoped that private organizations
could easily purchase a semi-exclusive license to use
But, as with every successful industry, Wi-Fi is looking
spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. There has been a lot of
for even faster growth. Several avenues are opening, but
activity around CBRS, and some uncertainty as the rules are
changes will be necessary in order to meet their needs.
still not final. Nevertheless, it seems that public and private
It is universally acknowledged that the Internet of Things LTE and 5G services will use this band, while Wi-Fi has no
(IoT) will grow into a huge market in the next few years. product plans and has ceded the initiative.
But IoT often requires battery-powered devices, wireless
connections reaching out for hundreds of meters, and very
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Other, more sweeping changes are in motion in spectrum Where access points are under common management, as in
and regulation. Amidst a land-grab by mobile operators, sports stadiums, airports, lecture theaters and convention
seeking more 5G spectrum, the incumbents—government centers, the new features offer even greater control, for
and military, satellite users, radars and others—are pushing higher network capacity and more even performance across
back on spectrum sharing proposals, and Wi-Fi is caught the user population.
with limited lobbying budgets and two frequency bands, at
OFDMA is ideal for clients transmitting short packets, and for
2.4 and 5 GHz, that have a relatively large span of spectrum
low-bandwidth devices such as IoT sensors, which will also
but are increasingly congested. Indeed, one of the threats
benefit from new power-save features including TWT. These
to Wi-Fi is the growing perception that the 2.4 GHz band is
and the 20 MHz-only feature should spur a generation of
‘junk’ in high-rise buildings and city centers due to overuse.
very-low-power chips tailored to this market.
The industry is not supine: a robust lobbying effort in 2017-19
seeks to open up bands across the 6 GHz range, and these And an often neglected market for Wi-Fi equipment, the
efforts are receiving a sympathetic hearing from regulators. outdoor point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless,
But the outcome of all these threads is uncertain: the race to will be boosted by features for extended range and higher
secure the spectrum Wi-Fi needs for continued success is by interference immunity. Indeed, early contenders in the
no means over. new wave of fixed-wireless-access networks—targeted by
5G - for home broadband services to rural communities are
And the 5G vision—powerful, radical, persuasive and
using Wi‑Fi chips in preference to 4G or 5G because of their
comprehensive—looms over all of Wi-Fi’s short- and
superior price and performance.
medium-term plans. Building on their strength in LTE,
mobile operators seek to use 5G to break out of the How will it turn out? The Wi-Fi ecosystem, much
consumer-phone market, into many of the markets Wi-Fi less‑coordinated and regimented than the cellular world,
dominates today including home broadband, connected has shown it is able to assemble features in unexpected
cars, factories and cities, and enterprise networking. In combinations and solve new problems. The features
many ways 802.11ax is Wi-Fi’s answer to the 5G vision, but — in 802.11ax give the companies that by now have deep
because of the differences between the Wi-Fi and mobile expertise in Wi-Fi technology the tools to move into
operator ecosystems—it is narrower and less detailed. already‑emerging markets and react to new opportunities.
Wi-Fi companies face a short-term perception that 5G is a The most likely outcome is that history will repeat itself and
comprehensive answer to many of the problems they are Wi-Fi will continue its growth amid the coming changes.
addressing piecemeal.
APPENDICES (EXISTING FEATURES AND NEW
Despite all these challenges, Wi-Fi can face the future with
802.11AX FEATURES DEFERRED TO WAVE 2)
great optimism. In a 20-year span, it has emerged from
nowhere to become a household name, and a technology Appendix 802.11ac existing MIMO features carried over

used everywhere. The features included in 802.11ax— to 802.11ax

following considerable debate among the companies that All of the features used for MIMO and beamforming in
support Wi-Fi—are not only for faster headline data-rates 802.11ac are carried forward to 802.11ax: they are explained
under ‘best case’ conditions, but responses to the practical below for completeness. 802.11ax implements downlink
real-world issues that are often due to Wi-Fi’s great success. MU‑MIMO (with a new control structure) in wave 1, and uplink
MU-MIMO in wave 2.
Features such as BSS coloring, multi-user scheduling and
backwards-compatibility will greatly improve performance
in congested areas, where many uncoordinated Wi-Fi access
points and client devices operate in close proximity.

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Figure 37: SU MIMO techniques, multi-antenna client

Beamforming in 802.11ax always uses explicit feedback from the client device to the AP to calculate the optimal transmit signal
weightings. This is unchanged from 802.11ac.

Figure 38: Beamforming feedback

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Appendix 802.11ax wave 2 features—uplink MU-MIMO

Uplink multi-user MIMO is simpler than the downlink variety: sounding and antenna weighting is not required.

Figure 39: Uplink multi-user MIMO transmission

The most difficult task in uplink multi-user MIMO is sense the air when they have a packet to transmit. If they
synchronizing the waveforms from different clients as they sense energy above a certain power threshold, or a Wi-Fi
reach the AP’s antennas. frame on the air, they defer transmission and use a backoff
algorithm to return to the air at a later time, again sensing to
When it identifies such groups, the AP considers several
ensure it is clear before transmitting. The CSMA/CA protocol
aspects of their signals and traffic, then instructs them to
has been very successful for Wi-Fi. It is distributed, meaning
transmit simultaneously as appropriate.
each device makes transmit decisions independently, which
This feature uses the same control mechanisms as OFDMA allows for overlap of different, uncoordinated basic service
in the uplink direction, but it is deferred to wave 2 due to sets (BSS’s, or cells, each with an access point).
its complexity.
It is due to CSMA/CA that Wi-Fi access points can be set
Appendix 802.11ax wave 2 features—Combined up adjacent to each other, with no coordination of channel
MU‑MIMO and OFDMA or other configuration, and each can support successful
As noted above, the combination of MU-MIMO and OFDMA communication with its clients. Wi-Fi is very good at ‘sharing’
in a single packet, while quite possible in theory, becomes the air and requires none of the cell-by-cell management
complicated in practice and support is deferred to wave 2. of, for instance, the cellular network. But when many
uncoordinated BSS’s overlap in space, as in city centers or
Appendix 802.11ax wave 2 features—Spatial re-use apartment buildings, CSMA/CA can be quite inefficient in
From the beginning, Wi-Fi has used a medium-access terms of network capacity.
protocol called CSMA/CA, where all devices including APs

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Figure 40: BSS coloring: co-channel interference

The reason is that wireless signals are not neatly confined, in the different cells, as, in addition to two power thresholds,
as we usually draw with circles or hexagons, but spread each client device keeps two network allocation vectors
over distance. If an AP and client device use sufficient (NAV’s) which tell it how long the medium will be occupied.
transmit power to communicate reliably across a BSS’s
The change is not unambiguously positive: there will
radius, their signals are still quite high at the edge of the
be cases where simultaneous transmission results in
‘cell’, and spread across neighboring cells as they decay over
one or both frames failing at the receivers, due to the
distance. In an enterprise network, where APs are managed,
reduced signal‑to-noise-and-interference-ratio (SINR), but
the RF channel plan tries to separate frequency reuse, so
retransmissions will allow error recovery and simulations
that APs on the same channel are kept far apart and do
predict significant capacity enhancement in real-world Wi-Fi
not interfere with each other. But with 80MHz channels
deployments because of this feature.
(introduced with 802.11ac) in widespread use, even the
5 GHz band supports only a few non-overlapping channels. Note that while the option to use ‘BSS color’ labeling in
Thus, even in enterprise networks neighboring APs on the 802.11ax transmissions is part of the standard, the algorithm
same channel are sometimes unavoidable, and when APs and mechanisms for configuring APs with appropriate
are uncoordinated, same-channel or co-channel interference ‘colors’ is left to equipment vendors. We may see a range
can be common. In such scenarios, even though two or of automatic and semi-automatic configuration features as
more APs and many client devices are present, only one AP 802.11ax rolls out.
or device can transmit at a time, as CSMA/CA causes all the
Appendix 802.11ax wave 2 features—Outdoor and
others to defer.
long‑range operation
BSS coloring works by distinguishing between ‘same BSS’ and 802.11ax includes a number of features that are useful
‘distant BSS’ transmissions and applying different CSMA/CA for outdoor and long-range operation, chiefly aimed at
power thresholds. This allows simultaneous transmissions point-to-point links. The main innovation is the single-user
extended-range frame.

Figure 41: BSS coloring: before and after

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Figure 42: Single-user extended-range frame

The frame includes a repeated HE-SIG-A field in the • The dual-beacon, a repeated beacon (because it
preamble, for better resistance to signal fading and cannot be read by mainstream devices, this must be
interference. It is specified to use only one spatial stream, accompanied by a conventional beacon)
and low data-rates for similar reasons. • Dual sub-carrier modulation (DCM) where the same
signal is replicated across two subcarriers. This is new in
In long-range operation, the longer cyclic prefix options
802.11ax.
(1.6 and 3.2 usec) could be used with this frame to combat
All these techniques go together, and they will probably all be
long‑delay multipath.
deferred to wave 2.
Other measures to extend range include:

• An option to use a 10 MHz bandwidth for the packet

(the 106-RU sub-channel), which would be used with

Appendix—Abbreviations ER Extended Range

3GPP 3 Generation Partnership Project
rd
FCC Federal Communications Commission
AC Access Category
FDD Frequency Division Duplex
ADI Association Identifier
FFT Fast Fourier Transform
A-MSDU Aggregated MAC Service Data Unit
GCR Group Cast with Retries
A-MPDU Aggregated Protocol Service Data Unit
GI Guard Interval
AP Access Point
HE High Efficiency
BAR Block-Ack Request
HT High Throughput
BCC Binary Convolutional Coding
HEW High Efficiency Wireless
BQRP Bandwidth Query Report Poll
LTF Long Training Field
BRP Beamforming Report Poll
MIMO Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output
BSRP Buffer Status Report Poll
NDP Null Data Packet
CP Cyclic Prefix
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing
CSI Channel State Information
OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple
CSMA/CA Channel Sense Multiple Access with Access
Collision Avoidance
L- Legacy
CTS Clear To Send
LDPC Low Density Parity Check
DCM Dual sub-Carrier Modulation
MAC Medium Access Control
DFS Dynamic Frequency Selection
MCS Modulation and Coding Scheme
DL Downlink
MU Multiple User
EIRP Effective Isotropic Radiated Power
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NAV Network Allocation Vector TDM Time Division Multiplexing

NDP Null Data Packet TDMA Time Division Multiple Access

NDPA Null Data Packet Announcement UL Uplink

PE Packet Extension VHT Very High Throughput

PLCP Physical Layer Convergence Protocol Wi-Fi Not an abbreviation

PPDU PLCP Protocol Data Unit WISP Wireless Internet Service Provider

RF Radio Frequency Appendix—References

RSSI Received Signal Strength Indication • IEEE ‘15/0132r15 Specification Framework for TGax’,
May 2016
RTS Request To Send
• IEEE ‘P802.11axTM/D2.0 Draft Standard for Information
RU Resource Unit technology’, November 2017
• Wi-Fi Alliance ‘Marketing Requirements Document
SINR Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio
for Interoperability Testing of Wi-Fi ax’, version 1.1,
SNR Signal to Noise Ratio November 2017 (not publicly available)
• Wi-Fi Alliance ‘Marketing Requirements Document for
STA Station
Interoperability Testing of Approved ax Products, Draft
STF Short Training Field Appendix: ax Feature Descriptions’, version 1.4, 2017
STS Space Time Stream (not publicly available)

STBC Space-Time Block Coding

SU Single User

TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol / Internet

Protocol

TDD Time Division Duplex

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