An Uplink OFDMA Access Method for Low Latency in Next-Generation WLANs

The next generation of wireless local area network (WLAN) standard: IEEE 802.11be takes ultra-high-definition video and ultra-low latency services as its core service bearer targets. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technology can improve the efficiency of multi-access, but the OFDMA protocol of the existing WLAN can only serve one user per resource unit in a transmission process, and the data between different users needs to be filled with invalid information bits (padding) to ensure the alignment of the transmission time. Padding creates a waste of resources and affects the latency characteristics of the business. This paper proposes an uplink OFDMA access method for low latency in the next generation of WLANs, allowing the wireless access point (AP) to divide OFDMA resource unit into multiple periods from time and assign each period to a station (STA) to transmit. The scheme can avoid the waste of resources and improve the response speed of user services. In this paper, the protocol flow and frame structure of this method are designed in detail to make scheme have good compatibility with IEEE 802.11ax. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly improve latency performance compared with IEEE 802.11ax.