IEEE 802.1X

Wi-Fi array

Reuse

Engineering

Wireless lan

IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11b-1999

Quality of service

Telecommunications

Computer science

Computer network

Wireless mesh network

Waste management

Inter-Access Point Protocol

Megabit

IEEE 802.11w-2009

Wi-Fi

IEEE 802.11s

IEEE 802

IEEE 802.11u

IEEE 802.11g-2003

Wireless

Throughput

IEEE 802.11e-2005

Wireless network

While celebrating the 21st year since the very first IEEE 802.11 “legacy” 2 Mbit/s wireless local area network standard, the latest Wi-Fi newborn is today reaching the finish line, topping the remarkable speed of 10 Gbit/s. IEEE 802.11ax was launched in May 2014 with the goal of enhancing throughput-per-area in high-density scenarios. The first 802.11ax draft versions, namely, D1.0 and D2.0, were released at the end of 2016 and 2017. Focusing on a more mature version D3.0, in this tutorial paper, we help the reader to smoothly enter into the several major 802.11ax breakthroughs, including a brand new orthogonal frequency-division multiple access-based random access approach as well as novel spatial frequency reuse techniques. In addition, this tutorial will highlight selected significant improvements (including physical layer enhancements, multi-user multiple input multiple output extensions, power saving advances, and so on) which make this standard a very significant step forward with respect to its predecessor 802.11ac.

A Tutorial on IEEE 802.11ax High Efficiency WLANs