IEEE 802.11ax: High-Efficiency WLANs

IEEE 802.11ax-2019 will replace both IEEE 802.11n-2009 and IEEE 802.11ac-2013 as the next high-throughput Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) amendment. In this paper, we review the expected future WLAN scenarios and use-cases that justify the push for a new PHY/MAC IEEE 802.11 amendment. After that, we overview a set of new technical features that may be included in the IEEE 802.11ax-2019 amendment and describe both their advantages and drawbacks. Finally, we discuss some of the network-level functionalities that are required to fully improve the user experience in next-generation WLANs and note their relation with other on-going IEEE 802.11 amendments.