On the Energy Efficiency of IEEE 802.11Ax High Density WLANS

Wireless communications evolved in a remarkable way during the last decade and is well on its way to surpass wired internet. The demand shifted towards higher transmission speed for more users and heavier traffics. In this paper, we present an IEEE 802.11ax scenario, in which we study the energy efficiency for the key metrics of the MAC layer. In this latest edition, called High Efficiency WLAN (HEW) energy is a main concern in order to satisfy scenarios of internet of things and wireless sensor networks. we prove that some of the new features such as the higher order modulation and coding schemes enhance remarkably the energy efficiency. We also show the impact of an increase in the number of users on the system and prove the payoff of using IEEE 802.11ax. We evaluate the contention window size performance as one of the most important metrics, on which throughput highly depends.