Multi-user access mechanism with intra-access categories differentiation for IEEE 802.11ac wireless local area networks

To cope with the increasing demand of multimedia applications, new IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks devices have been defined such as IEEE 802.11aa and IEEE 802.11ac. The former proposes new intra-access categories (AC) differentiation based on stream classification service (SCS) scheme. The latter standard allows simultaneous downlink transmissions thanks to downlink multi-user MIMO technology and sharing transmission opportunity (TXOP) period scheme. In this paper, we focus on the basis of this technique and the behavior of the access point (AP) to manage the multi-user access. Then, we propose a hybrid access mechanism entitled multi-user multi-cast access mechanism (MUMAM) that supports downlink multi-user transmissions while considering intra-AC differentiation. MUMAN considers SCS scheme to prioritize between multicast and unicast flows of an AC and follows transmissions based on IEEE 802.11ac TXOP sharing technique. Extensive simulation and analysis show that MUMAM has a significant positive impact on delay and throughput performance of different AC(s).