An Optimal Channel Bonding Strategy for IEEE 802.11be

Although there are a large number of available channels that can be bonded together for data transmission in the next generation WLAN, i.e., IEEE 802.11be protocol, it may cause long data transmission time to transmit large files due to the inefficient channel bonding strategies. This paper proposes an optimal channel bonding strategy based on the optimal stopping theory. Firstly, under the constraint of the number of available channels, the problem of minimizing the transmission time of large files is formulated as an optimal stopping problem, where the time duration of large file transmission is defined as the sum of channel accessing time and data transmission time after successful access into the channel, Secondly, the threshold of successful bonded channel number is derived based on the optimal stopping theory. When the channel access is successful, data transmission is performed if the number of bondable channels is larger than the threshold. Otherwise this data transmission opportunity is dropped and channel competition is resumed. The simulation results show that, compared with the traditional EDCA if access-success then-transmit strategy and the fixed bonding channel number threshold strategy, the data transmission completion time of large file is shortened by more than 40%.