Data Division Transmission Method with Performance Analysis in Wi-Fi 7 Multi-Link Operation

As the IoT market expands, the use of multiple IoT devices and personal devices is rapidly increasing. With the increase in devices, WLAN technology to improve throughput is essential. IEEE 802.11be EHT is being standardized in Wi-Fi 7 with the goal of improving throughput. In particular, MLA is being proposed as a method to accommodate more devices and improve throughput at the MAC layer of IEEE 802.111be EHT. However, there is also a problem that one device can have multiple links, which leads to inter-link interference problem. In this paper, we propose a DCF operation method using MLA called a Data Division Transmission (DDT) method to mitigate the inter-link interference problem of MLD and improve throughput, which is the ultimate goal of IEEE 802.11be EHT. This method mitigates the inter-link interference problem by activating only one link in the adjacent frequency bands of 5 GHz and 6 GHz, and effectively utilizes the characteristics of multi-link and tri-band to improve throughput by dividing and transmitting data. A Markov chain model is presented to analyze the performance of the proposed DDT method, and the performance analysis is conducted considering the coexistence with legacy devices as MLD is introduced. The performance analysis shows that the proposed DDT method improves the throughput by up to 26 Mbps over the existing FT method and demonstrates stable coexistence with legacy devices.