Spatial Clustering Group-Based OFDMA Multiple Access Protocol with Carrier Sensing for the Next-generation WLANs

Aiming at the problem of resource allocation strategies limiting the system transmission rate in indoor visible light communication and radio frequency (VLC/RF) systems, a new resource allocation method is proposed, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) technology is introduced. The capacity of the communication system is effectively increased. In the VLC/RF system model based on OFDMA, the Lyapunov optimization method is used to transform the time averaging problem into a series of single-slot online problems to reduce its computational complexity, the optimization problem is decomposed into three independent subproblems, and the Lagrange relaxation method and convex optimization theory are used to solve the subproblems to maximize the average transmission rate of the system, and the Lyapunov drift is used to ensure the stability of the system. Simulation verifies that the Lyapunov optimization algorithm does not require iteration, which improves the optimization speed to a high extent. The simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation strategy effectively balances the system queue length and transmission rate, improves the average transmission rate of the system to the greatest extent under the premise of ensuring the stability of the system, and compares with other algorithms from the aspects of system stability and transmission rate, which proves the effectiveness of the Lyapunov optimization algorithm.

The next generation wireless local area network (WLAN) needs to significantly improve the area throughput in high-dense deployment scenario. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), considered as the key technology of the next generation WLAN, has been adopted by IEEE 802.11ax. However, most existing studies have one tricky problem: interference extension problem, i.e., the stations (STAs) placed at dispersive locations from one basic service set (BSS) access channel and transmit data simultaneously through OFDMA, thereby interfering a large area and suppressing the potential transmissions around this BSS. Unfortunately, high-dense deployment scenario exacerbates interference extension problem. This article proposes a spatial clustering group division-based OFDMA (SCGD-OFDMA) protocol, which enables the geographically close STAs to form spatial clustering groups, named SCGs. Each SCG has a leader STA and several member STAs. Each SCG’s leader STA contends for channel resources. After that, the leader STAs that successfully contending channel are scheduled by the access point one by one to trigger its member STAs to transmit uplink data by using OFDMA. Therefore, the geographical interference area is reduced and the area throughput is improved since the concurrent STAs in one SCG are located in limited area. This article theoretically analyzes the optimal SCG establishment, and throughput and area throughput of SCGD-OFDMA. Theoretical analysis is consistent with simulation results. The simulation results also show that when the number of STAs is 200 and all resource units are used for random access, SCGD-OFDMA outperforms IEEE 802.11ax and OMAX in area throughput by 56.13% and 190.97%, respectively.

IEEE 802.11ax uplink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based random access (UORA) is a new feature for random channel access in wireless local area networks (WLANs). Similar to the legacy random access scheme in WLANs, UORA performs the OFDMA backoff (OBO) procedure to access the channel and decides on a random OBO counter within the OFDMA contention window (OCW) value. An access point (AP) can determine the OCW range and inform each station (STA) of it. However, how to determine a reasonable OCW range is beyond the scope of the IEEE 802.11ax standard. The OCW range is crucial to the UORA performance, and it primarily depends on the number of contending STAs, but it is challenging for the AP to accurately and quickly estimate or keep track of the number of contending STAs without the aid of a specific signaling mechanism. In addition, the one for this purpose incurs an additional delay and overhead in the channel access procedure. Therefore, the performance of a UORA scheme can be degraded by an improper OCW range, especially when the number of contending STAs changes dynamically. We first observed the effect of OCW values on channel efficiency and derived its optimal value from an analytical model. Next, we proposed a simple yet effective OBO control scheme where each STA determines its own OBO counter in a distributed manner rather than adjusting the OCW value globally. In the proposed scheme, each STA determines an appropriate OBO counter depending on whether the previous transmission was successful or not so that collisions can be mitigated without leaving OFDMA resource units unnecessarily idle. The results of a simulation study confirm that the throughput of the proposed scheme is comparable to the optimal OCW-based scheme and is improved by up to 15 times compared to the standard UORA scheme.

IEEE 802.11ax introduces Uplink Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)-based Random Access (UORA), a novel feature for facilitating random channel access in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Similar to the conventional random access scheme in WLANs, UORA employs the OFDMA backoff (OBO) procedure to access the channel’s Resource Units (RUs) and selects a random OBO counter within the OFDMA contention window (OCW) range. The Access Point (AP) can determine and communicate this OCW range to each station (STA). Multiple STAs accessing RUs result in transmission failure due to RU collisions, which occur when specific RUs remain unassessed by any STA, leading to wastage. Efforts to optimize channel efficiency require minimizing both collisions and idle RU despite the challenges arising from UORA’s distributed and random nature. The Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm introduces a random uniform distribution strategy for managing RU allocations among STAs. The results demonstrate that this approach enables STAs to access RUs in a distributed manner, effectively reducing idle and wasted RUs, especially in scenarios involving a limited number of STAs. Furthermore, this approach effectively mitigates collisions among STAs, even in scenarios with a more significant number of STAs.

OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) is a well-known multicarrier modulation technique that allows high-rate data transmissions over multipath broadband wireless channels. By usingOFDM, a high-rate data stream is split into a number of lower-rate streams that are simultaneously transmitted on different orthogonal subcarriers. Thus, the broadband channel is decomposed into a set of parallel frequency-flat subchannels; each one corresponding to an OFDM subcarrier. In a single user scenario, if the channel state is known at the transmitter, the system performance can be enhanced by adapting the power and data rates over each subcarrier. For example, the transmitter can allocate more transmit power and higher data rates to the subcarriers with better channels. By doing this, the total throughput can be significantly increased. In a multiuser scenario, different subcarriers can be allocated to different users, which constitutes an orthogonal multiple access method known as OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access). OFDMA is one of the principal multiple access schemes for broadband wireless multiuser systems. It has being proposed for use in several broadband multiuser wireless standards like IEEE 802.20 (MBWA: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/20/), IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX: http://www.ieee802.org/16/, 2011) and 3GPP-LTE (http://www.3gpp.org/). This chapter focuses on the OFDMA broadcast channel (also known as downlink channel), since this is typically where high data rates and reliability is needed in broadband wireless multiuser systems. In OFDMA downlink transmission, each subchannel is assigned to one user at most, allowing simultaneous orthogonal transmission to several users. Once a subchannel is assigned to a user, the transmitter allocates a fraction of the total available power as well as a modulation and coding (data rate). If the channel state is known at the transmitter, the system performance can be significantly enhanced by allocating the available resources (subchannels, transmit power and data rates) intelligently according to the users’ channels. The allocation of these resources determines the quality of service (QoS) provided by the system to each user. Since different users experience different channels, this scheme does not only exploit the frequency diversity of the channel, but also the inherent multiuser diversity of the system. In multiuser transmission schemes, like OFDMA, the information-theoretic system performance is usually characterized by the capacity region. It is defined as the set of rates 6

With the rapid development of wireless local area network (WLAN) and the proliferation of intelligent terminals, the current WLAN protocol is no longer able to meet the needs of users. Therefore, the next generation WLAN: IEEE 802.11ax has emerged to meet the growing demand for user traffic. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), which enables simultaneous transmission of data by different User Equipment (UEs), is considered to be one of the key technologies of IEEE 802.11ax. In order to achieve high throughput rates and low access latency to ensure quality of service (QoS), IEEE 802.11ax supports two uplink access modes: scheduling access and random access. However, how to adaptively and efficiently switch these two access mechanisms in the process of real-time operation of the system, and effectively reduce the drawbacks caused by these two mechanisms is a thorny problem. This paper proposes an evaluation mechanism of network traffic load based on OFDMA-MAC protocol, and its performance is verified by simulation. The simulation results show that the traffic load assessment mechanism effectively improves the network throughput and quality of service (QoS), and also adapts to the dynamic changes in network traffic.

The next generation of wireless networks will use OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) technology in the uplink. In OFDMA, the uplink resources assigned to a user are called tiles each of which consists of a subset of consecutive subcarriers. Since at most one user is assigned to each of these tiles then reverse link transmissions within a sector are orthogonal. However, the transmission is affected by intersector interference since users in adjacent sectors may also have been assigned to the same tile. If those users in the adjacent sectors transmitted with high power then the intersector interference may severely limit the SINR achieved by the user. Therefore user transmission powers must be carefully managed to avoid excessive intersector interference. In this paper we investigate a framework in which each sector periodically broadcasts information on its intersector interference. Each access terminal (AT) then uses this information to adjust its transmission power in order to maintain intersector interferences below some specified threshold. We provide an algorithm for doing this and we show that the algorithm is robust, efficient and fair.

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) are the two major multiple access schemes for 4G wireless communications. In long term evolution (LTE) the downlink multiple access scheme is based on OFDMA and the uplink multiple access scheme is based on SC-FDMA. In this letter, we derive the fundamental performance difference between OFDMA and SC-FDMA, and present the general performance comparison between them. Analytical results show that OFDMA performance upper bounds SC-FDMA in the sense of capacity. The conclusion is further confirmed by numerical results.

Next-generation optical access networks are envisioned to evolve into a converged, high-speed, multiservice platform supporting residential, business, mobile backhaul, and special purpose applications. Moreover, bandwidth demand projections suggest that terabit aggregate capacity may need to be reached in such next-generation passive optical networks (PON). To satisfy these requirements while leveraging the large investments made in existing fiber plants, a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM)-based long-reach PON architecture combined with a multiple access technology that features a passive last-mile split, large per-λ speeds, and statistical bandwidth multiplexing can be exploited. In this paper, the first terabit PON based on hybrid WDM orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technology is proposed and experimentally verified. To enable high-speed, long-reach transmission with simplified optical network unit (ONU)-side digital signal processing, multiband OFDMA with ONU-side sub-band selectivity is proposed. Design challenges and tradeoffs between analog and digital domain sub-band combining and selection are also discussed. Finally, the experimental setup and results of the first 1.2 Tb/s (1 Tb/s after overhead) symmetric WDM-OFDMA-PON over 90 km straight single-mode fiber and 1:32 passive split, featuring multiband OFDMA, digitally selective ONUs, and a coherent-receiver OLT are presented and analyzed. By supporting up to 800 ONUs with 1.25/10 Gb/s guaranteed/peak rates and exhibiting a record rate-distance product achieved in long-reach PON, the demonstrated architecture may be viewed as promising for future converged terabit optical metro/access.

In this paper, we propose a joint resource allocation, routing, and connection admission control (CAC) scheme for uplink transmission in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) relay networks with cooperative relaying. For cooperative relaying, relay station can relay uplink data from mobile station (MS) to base station with cooperation of the MS using transmit diversity. Transmit diversity can be achieved by virtual MISO via distributed space---time coding. The proposed scheme jointly allocates OFDMA resources and selects path for each user with CAC to maximize the upink throughput of cooperative OFDMA relay networks. The basic OFDMA resource unit is considered as a resource element which is one subcarrier over one OFDMA symbol. An efficient multi-choice multi-dimensional knapsack (MMKP) algorithm is presented for the proposed scheme. The proposed MMKP algorithm provides a unified framework which is applicable to OFDMA networks with and without cooperative relaying. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme with and without cooperative relaying in a hilly terrain with heavy tree density by using OPNET-based simulation. We show that the cooperative relaying improve the uplink system throughput compared with non-cooperative relaying, and the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional link quality-based scheme in both cooperative and non-cooperative relay networks.

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards are generated by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for the Fourth Generation (4G) wireless communication systems. The Fourth Generation (4G) wireless communication standards use new physical layer signaling techniques in their physical layer. Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) are the two major signaling techniques used in LTE. OFDMA is used in the downlink of the Fourth Generation (4G) wireless communication systems for its high spectral efficiency and SC-FDMA is used in the uplink of the Fourth Generation (4G) wireless communication systems for its high power efficiency. The main objective of this paper is to design and implement the reliable and energy efficient architecture for LTE uplink system using FPGA. IFDMA is the most energy efficient subcarrier mapping scheme of SC-FDMA multiple access scheme. In IFDMA, the data symbols subcarrier mapping is not one to one instead each subcarrier carries a part from each data symbol transmitted at that time instant. The reason for the selection of IFDMA subcarrier mapping along with SC-FDMA multiple access scheme for LTE uplink comes mainly from its advantage to provide a low peak to average power ratio (PAPR) for the transmitted waveform. This results in less power consumption in the mobile station during uplink transmission. The reliability of the system is improved using interleaving process by avoiding packet loss. Convolution codes are less complex and are used to provide error free transmission. The enhancement of energy efficiency is done using the convolution coded IFDMA. The chosen energy efficient architecture must be more power efficient and support high data rates, which is the main requirement for the mobile user. The proposed reliable and energy efficient architecture for LTE uplink system is implemented using Xilinx system generator tool.

Recent Mobile Multimedia innovations evolved for the present society, is a mandatory requirement. To achieve this goal various forums have come forward with several design proposals to suit the group of applications in the Mobile Multimedia Networks (MMNs). In this regard, a new Multi-protocol Architecture for the Medium Access Control is required to seamless mobile multimedia networking. Hence a new Hybrid Multi-protocol Architecture is designed and proposed. Multimedia applications are bursty in nature and require dynamic real time services from the mobile networking. Efficient Resource Management and the Traffic control of mobile networks is very much needed to provide Quality of Service (QoS), in the piconets and in the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs). Because of the small coverage area of Pico cells and the characteristics of the multi-path and shadow fading radio environment, hand-off events in the future systems will occur at much higher rate that the macro cellular systems in the applications of MAN. With the Technical growth of mobile Wi-Max and powerful end systems, the newly proposed Multi-protocol architecture is likely to support the Multimedia Killer applications. The newly designed and developed MAC architecture is based on the Mixture of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), CDMA and TDMA Medium access control protocols for the Pico-nets. This protocol architecture is tested for its performance using the testing tool MATLAB. In this paper, a mixture of new MAC protocol for WLAN is proposed. In this design, the reservation and polling methods of MAC protocols to handle both the low and high data traffic of the mobile users is analyzed. The MAC standard specified by IEEE 802.16 for WIMAX is followed to benchmark and test the designed MAC protocol.

To provide better QoS guarantee for the next generation WLAN, IEEE 802.11ax task group is founded in March 2014. As a promising technology to accommodate multiple nodes concurrent transmissions in dense deployment scenario, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) will be adopted in IEEE 802.11ax with great possibility. In this paper, an OFDMA based multiple access protocol with QoS guarantee is proposed for the next generation WLAN. Firstly, a redundant access mechanism is given to increase the access success probability of the video traffic where the video stations can concurrently send multiple RTS packets in multiple subchannels. Secondly, a priority based resource allocation scheme is presented to let AP allocate more resources to the video stations. Simulation results show that our protocol outperforms the existing OFDMA based multiple access for IEEE 802.11ax (OMAX) protocol in terms of delay and delay jitter of video traffic in dense deployment scenario.

In this paper we present a two-dimensional medium access control (MAC) protocol. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) can make multiple stations (STA) transmit simultaneously on different sub-channels. On the other hand, carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) could make different stations contend the available channel from the time domain to avoid collision with each other. We propose a two-dimensional MAC protocol based on OFDMA and CSMA/CA in broadband systems. With the new designed MAC protocol different stations will access the channel from the time-frequency domain without interference and collision. The combination of OFDMA with CSMA/CA will improve the system throughput with efficient MAC and decrease the collision probability. We design that different stations will contend the available time-frequency resources dynamically under fairness. The system throughput of the designed protocol is analyzed and simulation results are presented to show the performance under our designed protocol far better than the conventional CSMA/CA protocol.

This chapter presents a brief overview of the OFDMA technique used in 4G WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) and 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) cellular system. It is shown that OFDMA is an extension of FDMA, where each frequency band is placed at the null of the adjacent frequency band. This is governed by the well-known “Fourier transform,” so that adjacent frequency bands are orthogonal to each other. OFDMA is a full-duplex communication system. The communication link is maintained in both directions in the time domain known as time division duplex (TDD). Numerous illustrations are used to bring students up to date in key concepts, underlying principles, and practical applications of “Fourier transform,” spectrum, and orthogonal properties of spectrum, leading to OFDMA. Construction of OFDMA channels from the FCC-allocated band is presented to illustrate the concept.