Survey and Performance Evaluation of the Upcoming Next Generation WLAN Standard - IEEE 802.11ax Qiao Qu1, Bo Li1, Member, IEEE, Mao Yang*1, Member, IEEE, Zhongjiang Yan1, Member, IEEE, Annan Yang1, Jian Yu2, Ming Gan2, Yunbo Li2, Xun Yang2, Osama Aboul-Magd2, Senior Member, IEEE, Edward Au2, Senior Member, IEEE, Der-Jiunn Deng3, Member, IEEE, and Kwang-Cheng Chen4, Fellow, IEEE 1School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China. 2Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., China. 3the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua, Taiwan. 4the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Florida, Florida, USA. Abstract —With the ever-increasing demand for wireless traffic and quality of serives (QoS), wireless local area networks (WLANs) have developed into one of the most dominant wireless networks that fully influence human life. As the most widely used WLANs standard, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 will release the upcoming next generation WLANs standard amendment: IEEE 802.11ax. This article comprehensively surveys and analyzes the application scenarios, technical requirements, standardization process, key technologies, and performance evaluations of IEEE 802.11ax. Starting from the technical objectives and requirements of IEEE 802.11ax, this article pays special attention to high-dense deployment scenarios. After that, the key technologies of IEEE 802.11ax, including the physical layer (PHY) enhancements, multi-user (MU) medium access control (MU-MAC), spatial reuse (SR), and power efficiency are discussed in detail, covering both standardization technologies as well as the latest academic studies. Furthermore, performance requirements of IEEE 802.11ax are evaluated via a newly proposed systems and link-level integrated simulation platform (SLISP). Simulations results confirm that IEEE 802.11ax significantly improves the user experience in high-density deployment, while successfully achieves the average per user throughput requirement in project authorization request (PAR) by four times compared to the legacy IEEE 802.11. Finally, potential advancement beyond IEEE 802.11ax are discussed to complete this holistic study on the latest IEEE 802.11ax. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first study to directly investigate and analyze the latest stable version of IEEE 802.11ax, and the first work to thoroughly and deeply evaluate the compliance of the performance requirements of IEEE 802.11ax. Index Terms—Wireless Local Area Networks; WLAN; IEEE 802.11ax; IEEE 802.11; WiFi; HEW; Multi-user MAC; Spatial Reuse; Power Efficiency; Simulation Platform I. Introduction Due to deep penetration of the mobile Internet and the continuous enrichment of wireless network services, demands for wireless traffic and quality of service (QoS) have dramatically increased in recent years [1]. Wireless local area networks (WLANs), together with the cellular networks, have emerged as the primary traffic bearing wireless networks due to their high speed, flexible deployment, and low cost. According to Cisco report, the wireless traffic in the world would sharply increase with a 47% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2016 to 2021. Moreover, WLANs carried data traffic from 42% in 2015 to 49% in 2021 [2]. Therefore, to respond the rapid growth of traffic demands, researchers, enterprises, and standardization organizations are increasingly focusing on the key technologies and standardization process of the next generation WLANs. As the most widely used WLAN standard [3], Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 is expected to release the next generation WLAN standard amendment: IEEE 802.11ax [4]. With the growing prosperity of smart terminals and the urgent demands of the Internet of Things (IoT) [5], high-dense deployment scenarios such as airports, stadiums, shopping malls, and enterprises develop into important scenarios of future wireless networks [6]. Future wireless networks need to deploy a large number of wireless access nodes such as base stations (BS) and access points (APs) in limited geographical areas to guarantee the required coverage and capacity; on the other hand, future wireless networks also need to support massive connectivities in a single cell, such as smart phones in a stadium and IoT devices in a smart home or enterprise network. Therefore, in Project Authorization Request (PAR) of IEEE 802.11ax, one of the most important documents of the standardization process, IEEE 802.11 highlights IEEE 802.11ax facing the requirements and objectives of such high-dense deployment scenarios [7]. From 1990s, IEEE started the standardization of IEEE 802.11 WLANs. IEEE 802.11 specifies the physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer of WLANs and has become the most widely used WLAN standard. To portrait the development of the IEEE 802.11 standard specification, we summarize the main amendments of IEEE 802.11 that have been or will be released in the future. As shown in Fig. 1, IEEE 802.11 WLANs mainly work on three frequency bands: the sub-1 GHz band, the 2.4/5 GHz band, and the above 45 GHz band. In this figure, the left edge and right edge of each block indicate the establishing time and releasing time of the standard amendments respectively. 1) Sub-1 GHz band WLANs. Sub-1GHz band WLANs can support a long transmission distance; however, the transmission rate is limited; therefore, it is suitable for networking scenarios with large coverage and low transmission rate, such as IoT. Specifically, IEEE 802.11af constructs the network on television (TV) white band (white spaces spectrum) based on cognitive radio [8], while IEEE 802.11ah focuses on the networking consisting the tremendous IoT devices [9]}. 2) Above 45 GHz band WLANs. The millimeter wave is known by quite large capacity, directional transmission, and heavy path loss; therefore, above 45 GHz band WLANs are suitable for short distance and high-speed scenarios, such as high-definition video transmission at homes. Specifically, IEEE 802.11ad accomplishes the first standardization work in this band [10]. IEEE 802.11ay, as the successor of IEEE 802.11ad, introduces channel bonding (CB) and downlink (DL) multi-user (MU) multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) to further enhance the transmission rate [11]. Moreover, the IEEE 802.11aj standard amendment modifies IEEE 802.11ad to be compatible with the Chinese 60 GHz and 45 GHz bands. 3) 2.4/5 GHz band WLANs. Communications in 2.4/5G Hz band compromises both advantages, larger coverage and higher bandwidth, and attracts most interests in deployment due to global availability and suitability for CMOS implementation. Therefore, the 2.4/5 GHz band has become the most popular frequency band for WLAN standards and solutions. The upcoming next generation WLANs standard amendment IEEE 802.11ax is working on this band, and we therefore focus on the technology evolution of 2.4/5 GHz band WLANs. In the following of this article, without special instructions, the word ``WLANs'' refers to WLANs in the 2.4/5 GHz band. By the way, the IEEE 802.11ba focuses on STA's power-saving and specifies PHY and MAC technologies for wake-up radio (WUR). Frequency 802.11aj PHY Bandwidth: Chinese above-45 GHz frequency band OFDM + Single Carrier MAC 802.11ay 802.11ad Super Frame EDCA PHY PHY Max Bandwidth: Max Bandwidth: 2.16GHz 8.64GHz above OFDM + Single OFDM + Single Carrier Carrier 45 GHz Max Speed: 6.75Gbps DL MU-MIMO MAC Channel Bonding Max Speed: ≥ Super Frame based 100Gbps EDCA MAC Super Frame based 802.11e EDCA MAC 802.11ax 802.11a 802.11ac PHY 802.11n Enhanced distributed PHY PHY Max Max Bandwidth: 160MHz Bandwidth: PHY Max Bandwidth: 20MHz channel access (EDCA) OFDM + 256-QAM 802.11ba 5 GHz OFDM DL MU-MIMO 160MHz Max Speed: Max Bandwidth: 40MHz Channel Bonding HCF Controlled Channel 1024-QAM 54Mbps OFDM Max Speed: 6.93Gbps PHY MAC OFDMA Access (HCCA) MIMO MAC Narrow band DCF UL & DL MIMO DCF+EDCA Channel Bonding OOK Block ACK (BA) Frame Aggregation + BA Channel Bonding Max Speed: 600Mbps Max Speed: 9.6Gbps MAC Direct Link Setup (DLS) MAC MAC STA: receive only AP: EDCA based EDCA & DCF EDCA+DCF 802.11b 802.11g Frame Aggregation Frame Aggregation PHY PHY + BA Max Enhanced Block ACK (BA) Max Bandwidth: Multi-user Channel 2.4 GHz Bandwidth: 20MHz 22MHz OFDM Access DSSS Max Speed: Max Speed: Spatial Reuse 54Mbps 11Mbps TWT MAC MAC DCF DCF 802.11ah PHY Channel Bandwidth: 16MHz OFDM+DL MU-MIMO Max Speed: 347Mbps MAC EDCA based Restricted access window (RAW) Sub 1 GHz Target wake time (TWT) 802.11af PHY Bandwidth: 8MHz OFDM+DL MU-MIMO Max Speed: 569Mbps MAC AP Scheduling based 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 Time Fig. 1 Evolution of IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The primary goal of the technology development and evolution of PHY is to improve the transmission rate. As shown in Fig. 1, IEEE 802.11a released in 1999 adopts orthogonal frequency multiplexing division (OFDM), and its maximum transmission rate reached 54 Mbps. During the same year, IEEE 802.11b adopts direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) with the maximum transmission rate of 11 Mbps. In 2003, IEEE 802.11g introduces OFDM to the 2.4 GHz band, so that the maximum transmission rate also reaches 54 Mbps. IEEE 802.11n, released in 2009, is supposed to be a milestone. It introduced CB and single user (SU) MIMO (SU-MIMO), thus the maximum transmission rate extends to 600 Mbps. Compared to the previous version, the maximum transmission rate of IEEE 802.11n increases more than 10-fold. In 2013, IEEE 802.11ac introduces 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (256-QAM) and CB enhancement technology, consequently, reaching a maximum transmission rate of 6.93 Gbps with DL MU-MIMO. Consequently, the PHY drives the transmission rate of IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The primary goal of the development of the MAC layer is to improve the utilization efficiency of wireless resources shared by multiple users and to specify the corresponding protocol procedures.