Toward an efficient and coordinated control of full-duplex radio communications in high-efficiency wireless local area networks

The full-duplex radio transmission technique is a prominent feature in the physical layer of the new IEEE 802.11ax standard for promoting the use of WiFi 6, also called HEW (High-Efficiency Wireless local area network). Based on this unprecedented technique, a WiFi transmitter has the ability to transmit and receive data simultaneously using the same radio channel, thereby doubling the network capacity and spectral efficiency. However, many challenges related to the MAC (medium access control) layer (including full-duplex configurations, hidden relationship, unbalance between data streams, and overhead) should be addressed to fully benefit from this technique. The aim of this paper is to design, implement, and assess a new Full-Duplex MAC protocol by meeting the inherent challenges in controlling full-duplex radio communications. Accordingly, an efficient and coordinated control protocol is proposed, whose basic principle is to exchange all relevant control information and transmit data without loss or unnecessary delay. The performance evaluation of the proposed protocol demonstrates that the results obtained are the best, especially when the network is dense or the traffic from the access point is heavy.