Moving RTS/CTS to the Frequency Domain: An Efficient Contention Scheme for 802.11ax Networks

In this paper, we propose a contention mechanism based on the execution of multiple contention rounds in the frequency domain (ReCHo), which is designed to offer high throughput performance and robustness with respect to imperfect carrier sensing. The main idea is using narrow tones as signalling messages for performing channel access contentions and allowing the Access Point (AP) to echo these signals, in order to extend the sensing capabilities to all the stations associated to the AP. In particular, we refer to the emerging IEEE 802.11ax standard, showing how our scheme can boost performance of random access with respect to the current version of IEEE 802.11ax OFDMA Back-Off (OBO), even when hidden node probability is very high.