Dynamic sensitivity control algorithm leveraging adaptive RTS/CTS for IEEE 802.11ax

The need for higher data rates and improved coverage has led to massive and uncoordinated deployments of IEEE 802.11 based WLAN Access Points in geographically limited areas that has resulted in increased interference with reduced area throughput. Recently, the IEEE 802.11 working group has continued efforts to cater the aforementioned problems by creating the IEEE 802.11ax Task Group, TGax (which aims to improve performance in dense environments). TGax has been actively involved in the design of Clear Channel Access (CCA) modification schemes, where Dynamic Sensitivity Control (DSC) algorithm has been proposed as one of the key innovative technologies to increase the spectral reuse. However, DSC scheme has drawbacks: increase in frame collisions as well as hidden node count. In this paper, we propose the combined usage of DSC along with an intelligent mechanism to enable RTS/CTS on selected stations within densely deployed WLAN network. We present methods to select stations for 4-way handshake and indicate considerable gains (up to 60%) when a network utilizing the aforementioned method is compared with legacy IEEE 802.11 operation.