Performance Analysis of Resource Sharing During Downlink Multi-User Transmissions in CSMA/ECA Full Duplex WLANs

Full Duplex (FD) wireless communications is considered to be the next big step for future Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Old (IEEE 802.11ac) and new (IEEE 802.11ax) WLAN features are expected to co-exist with FD operation. Some of these features include Downlink Multi-User (DL MU) transmissions at the physical layer while at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer techniques such as the Transmission Opportunity (TXOP) sharing mechanism facilitates these multiuser transmissions. The traditional Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol is inadequate to support full duplex communications efficiently. A very promising adaptation of CSMA/CA and a powerful candidate as the basic channel access method for future WLANs is the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Enhanced Collision Avoidance (CSMA/ECA). In this paper, we provide an analytical model to assess the performance of resource sharing techniques in full duplex WLANs operating with the CSMA/ECA protocol. Our analysis is based on Markov chains to obtain an estimate of the achievable throughput of the Quality of Service Access Point (QAP) during DL MU transmissions.