IEEE 802.

11ah
What's new?
Is intended to support extended
range Wi-Fi, and the IoT

Operates in sub 1GHz ISM bands

A new physical layer and MAC has

been developed, for the reasons:

The using of new frequency

bands (sub 1GHz)

Don't need so high speed like that

one in other Wi-Fi variants

The intention to reduce power

consumption of nodes/stations
Don't need to maintain backward

compactibility

IEEE 802.11ah
Use cases
1.Smart sensors and meters

smart meters (gas, water and power consumption),

smart grids,

environmental and agricultural monitoring (temperature,

humidity, wind speed, water level, pollution, animal condition,

forest fire detection, etc.),

automation of industrial process (petroleum refinement, iron

and steel, pharmacy),

indoor healthcare/fitness system (blood pressure, heart rate,

weight),

elderly care system (fall detection, pill bottle monitor).

IEEE 802.11ah
Use cases (cont.)
2. Backhaul aggregation:
802.11ah covers the backhaul connection between 802.15.4g devices and remote servers
(since IEEE 802.15.4g also works in Sub 1GHz band, TGah addresses coexistence with
these devices).

3. Extended range hotspot and cellular offloading:

With long transmission range, 802.11ah will provide real additional value in cellular
offloading (for pedestrian only), maximum aggregate multi-station data rate may be up to
20Mbps at the PHY layer.

IEEE 802.11ah
PHY / radio interface

802.11ah uses OFDM to provide the modulation scheme for the signal

there are two categories into which the 802.11ah physical layer PHY can be split:

2, 4, 8, and 16 MHz: These modes are based on 20, 40, 80, 160 MHz
bandwidth modes of 802.11ac, being 10 times down-clocked, i.e. symbol
lengths are 10 times of that in 802.11ac. MIMO is also used in these mode (up
to 4 spatial streams).

1MHz channel bandwidth: mainly use for low data rate (150Kbps - 4Mbps for
single spatial stream) & long range (up to 1Km) applications such as M2M,
IoT,... One more Modulation and Coding Scheme - MCS10 - is defined and
used (for 1MHz channel only), it's a mode of MCS0 (see table on next page)
but with a 2x repetition of the data.

There is a variety of Modulation and Coding Scheme - MCS - options available. These
are tabulated on next page:

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

Modulation Coding Schemes/PHY rates for 1 spatial stream
Modulation Code Rate

1MHz
(Mbps)

2MHz
(Mbps)

4MHz
(Mbps)

8MHz
(Mbps)

16MHz
(Mbps)

MCS0

BPSK

1/2

.300

0.65

1.5

3.25

6.5

MCS1

QPSK

1/2

.600

1.3

6.5

13

MCS2

QPSK

3/4

.900

1.95

4.5

9.75

19.5

MCS3

16-QAM

1/2

1.2

2.6

13

26

MCS4

16-QAM

3/4

1.8

3.9

19.5

39

MCS5

64-QAM

2/3

2.4

5.2

12

26

52

MCS6

64-QAM

3/4

2.7

5.85

13.5

29.25

58.5

MCS7

64-QAM

5/6

6.5

15

32.25

65

MCS8

256-QAM

3/4

3.6

7.8

18

39

78

MCS9

256-QAM

5/6

N/A

20

43.33

86.67

MCS10

BPSK

1/2

.150

Extra 2x repetition mode to increase range

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

Data rates in 2MHz mode, with Normal and Short GI
IEEE 802.11ah MCS for 2MHz Bandwidth Channels
Data Rate (Mbps)
MCS Index

Modulation

Code Rate

Normal GI (8us)

Short GI (4us)

BPSK

1/2

0.65

0.72

QPSK

1/2

1.3

1.44

QPSK

3/4

1.95

2.17

16-QAM

1/2

2.6

2.89

16-QAM

3/4

3.9

4.33

64-QAM

2/3

5.2

5.78

64-QAM

3/4

5.85

6.5

64-QAM

5/6

6.5

7.22

256-QAM

3/4

7.8

8.67

256-QAM

5/6

N/A *

N/A

* MCS9 is not valid for 802.11ah with a single spatial stream for a 2 MHz channel, the reason is
same with that in 20MHz channel of 802.11ac.

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

ISM Allocations applicable for IEEE 802.11ah
Country

Band limits (MHz)

US

902 - 928

Korea

917.5 - 923.5

Europe

863 - 868

China

755 - 787

Japan

916.5 - 927.5

Singapore 866-869 & 920-925

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

Channelization in US

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

Channel bandwidth and Number of channels

1MHz

2MHz

4MHz

8MHz

16MHz

US

26

13

Korea

Europe

China

32

Japan

11

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

Range enhencement
Improvement of 11ah (over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi)
Parameter

Robust 900MHz
client device

Low power/small form factor

900MHz client device

Transmit power compare to 17dBm

0dB

-17dB

Tx antenna gain

0dB

-3dB

Free space pathloss

+8.5dB

+8.5dB

Noise Bandwidth (2MHz)

+10dB

+10dB

Flat fading

-4.5dB

-4.5dB

Sub Total

+14dB

-6dB

1MHz channel width

+3dB

+3dB

2x repetition coding

+3dB

+3dB

Total

+20dB

0dB

802.11ah's link budget has ~20dB better than 2.4GHz.

802.11ah PHY / radio interface (cont.)

Subchannel selective transmission (SST)
STAs with limited capabilities (e.g. sensor nodes) may support only 1 and 2MHz
(mandatory) APs are likely to support wider bandwidth.

SST APs allow the use of subchannels within a wider bandwidth.

AP announces in Beacons which subchannels are temporarily available for SST
Beacons are duplicated on a set of different subchannels.
STAs choose the best subchannel (e.g. less affected by fading).

IEEE 802.11
MAC Layer

IEEE 802.11 MAC (review)

Medium Access - DCF vs PCF (Distributed vs Point Coordination Function)
When DCF is used:

There isn't any Centralized - Coordinator

All of associated STAs and the AP in a BSS share the medium by using CCA Clear
Channel Assessment mechanism, in that, to assess if the channel is free, they use :

Energy Detection and

Carrier Sense or Wi-Fi preamble Detection).

IEEE 802.11 MAC (review)

Medium Access - DCF vs PCF (cont.)
When DCF is used: (cont.)

In some cases, the AP and the STAs can use NAV (Network Allocation Vector - be
carried in MAC header) to reserve the medium for some consecutive frames.
RTS/CTS mechanism is one of those cases. The mechanism in that NAV is used also
known as Virtual Carrier Sense mechanism.

IEEE 802.11 MAC (review)

Medium Access - DCF vs PCF (cont.)
When PCF is used:

There is a Point Coordinator (reside in the AP) that has the right to allocate the medium
to the PCF-based STAs by polling frames.
The Point Coordinator poll the STAs one-by-one to send and receive data, hence there is
not internal contention in a BSS. This period is so called CFP - contention-free Period.
PCF-based STAs, in fact, are the STAs which can reply to the polling frames of the AP.
AP use NAV(sent in beacon) to prevent all of STAs transmit data but which one is polled.

IEEE 802.11 MAC (review)

Medium Access - DCF vs PCF (cont.)
When the AP want to provide PCF:

NAV is used to prevent DCF-based STAs (or normal STAs) to access to the
medium.
Due to the priority of PCF over DCF, the CFP is not provided full-time. It alternate with
the period where the standard DCF-based services are provided. In that case, the first
period after Beacon Frames are always CFP. A CFP-end frame will be send to
explicitly terminate the CFP.

The PCF is not widely implemented, it's restricted to infrastructure networks and Wi-Fi
Alliance does not include yet PCF functionality in their interoperability standard.

IEEE 802.11e-2005 MAC

QoS for 802.11 part of 802.11 from 2007

802.11e-2005 is an approved amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard that defines a set
of quality of service (QoS) enhancements for wireless LAN applications through
modifications to the MAC layer.
The 802.11e enhances the DCF and the PCF, through a new coordination function: the
hybrid coordination function (HCF).
Within the HCF, there are two methods of channel access, similar to those defined in the
legacy 802.11 MAC:

HCCA - HCF Controlled Channel Access works a lot like PCF and:
EDCA - Enhanced Distributed Channel Access uses classified IFS for different
categories of traffic and TXOP (Transmit Opportunity) to provide contention-free
periods to QSTAs (QoS-STAs STAs in 802.11e) to access the channel in DCF
period.

Both EDCA and HCCA define Traffic Categories (TCs). For example,

emails could be assigned to a low priority class, and

Video or Voice over Wireless LAN could be assigned to a high priority class.

HCCA is generally considered the most advanced (and complex) coordination function.
Implementing the HCCA on end stations uses the existing DCF mechanism for channel
access (no change to DCF or EDCA operation is needed). Stations only need to be able to
respond to poll messages!

802.11e MAC (cont.)

EDCA - Enhanced Distributed Channel Access

Traffic is classified into 4 categories (AC-access categories).

Background AC_BK (lowest priority)

Best Effort AC_BE
Video
AC_VI
Voice

AC_VO (highest priority)

High-priority traffic has a higher chance of being sent than low-priority traffic because
of it has shorter inter-frame space (IFS) and back-off time.
AP can provide contention-free access period called a Transmit Opportunity (TXOP)
a bounded time interval during which a Q-STA can send multiple frames without
contention (within their BSS).
TXOP is assigned to each Q-STA, specified per TS Traffic Stream in that QSTA.
Each Q-STA may have upto 4 TSs classified as mention above.
A Q-STA can use a TXOP to transmit multiple frames within an access category as
many frames as possible as long as the duration of the transmissions does not
extend beyond the maximum duration specified of a TXOP.
If a frame is too large to be transmitted in a single TXOP, it should be fragmented into
smaller frames and send them in consecutives TXOP.

802.11e MAC (cont.)

EDCA - Enhanced Distributed Channel Access

EDCA (cont.)
If there are many TSs in a Q-STA, they have to be resolved within that Q-STA as like as
virtual collision or internal collision with a internal collision handler.

802.11e MAC (cont.)

EDCA - Enhanced Distributed Channel Access

EDCA (cont.)
Arbitration Inter-Frame Space (AIFS) and CW in 802.11e for Traffic Categories of QSTAs

802.11e MAC (cont.)

TXOP in EDCA

t < EDCA TXOP limit

Beacon

Beacon

Busy

Backo
f

Frame 2

Frame 1

Backo
f
AIFS

AIFS

SIFS

SIFS
Ack

Ack

802.11e MAC (cont.)

HCCA - HCF Controlled Channel Access
Similar to PCF, and same polling mechanism to assign TXOP to Q-STA, but:

Polling can be issued in both CFP and CP (in Controlled Access Periods)

HC Polling is scheduled according to Transmit specifications (TSPECs)

HC grants a polled TXOP to one Q-STA, which restricts the duration of the Q-STAs
access to the medium.

802.11e MAC (cont.)

TXOP in HCCA - HCF Controlled Channel Access

UPLINK TXOP

DOWNLINK TXOP

Polled TXOP limit

Downlink TXOP limit

Beacon
Busy

Poll + Data

Ack

Ack

PIFS

SIFS

SIFS
SIFS
Data + Ack

Data

Data
PIFS

SIFS

SIFS

SIFS
Data

Ack

802.11 Power Saving Mode

IEEE 802.11 MAC (review)

Power Saving Mode
802.11 stations (STAs) can use Power Save Mode PS-mode to save their batteries
lifes, in that mode, they can go to sleep and wake up in listen mode to monitor Beacon
frames. The AP will buffer all of STA's incomming messages, notify them on every
Beacon frame, up until they wake up and get their informations (or timeout !).
For using PS mode:

During association, the STA tells the AP that it will use PS-mode, and it's listen
interval (or wake up cycle, this interval may be longer than few beacon
interval). In PS-mode, the STA has to listen periodically Beacon frames.
The AP will buffer incomming frames of the PS-mode STAs, notify them by the
TIM (Traffic Indication Map) associated in every beacon frame whether the
frames for each PS-mode STA.
For Multi-cast or Broad-cast data, AP use TIM to notify whether the frames like
that, and use DTIM (Delivery TIM) for more detail. Every DTIM-interval
(= beacon-interval x n), TIM is periodically replaced by DTIM in beacon frame, AP
also uses TIM to notify STAs when DTIM will be used instead of TIM. After the
beacon frame with DTIM, AP will transmit Multi-cast and Broad-cast data frames
before any individually addressed frames.
If an STA get relevant notice, it should stay awake to retrieve it's data.

802.11ah MAC (review)

Power Saving: (cont.)

In PS-mode, STAs retrieve their data in the following ways:

For Uni-cast data:

In CFP: STAs have to wait for the AP transmit the polling frames (CF-poll) to the
pollable STAs (CPF-based STAs), and then send them their data, one-by-one.
In non-CFP (where DCF is used): STAs transmit a PS-poll frame, the AP either

transmits the information frames, or

send ACKs the PS-poll frame and transmits the information frames later

For Group data (Multi-cast and Broad-cast data):

AP send group data frames, if there are any, after the beacon frames with DTIM, any
STAs should keep awake to receive DTIM (if there was a notice in previous TIMs)
and these group data.

802.11 MAC (review)

Power Saving: (cont.)

Two STAs listen TIM and retrieve their uni-cast data in PS-mode (when DCF is used)

802.11 MAC (review)

Power Saving: (cont.)

Two STAs listen TIM and retrieve their uni-cast data in PS-mode (when PCF is used)

Data

CF-Poll

Data

TIM

CF-Poll

Beacon_
Interval

ACK

PS-poll

STA 2 in
PS mode

ACK

STA 1 in
PS mode

PS-poll

AP

TIM

TIM

802.11 MAC (review)

Power Saving: (cont.)

Two STAs listen DTIM and retrieve broad-cast data in PS-mode (DCF & PCF)

Beacon_
Interval
TIM

DTIM
Broadcast Data

AP

STA 1 in
PS mode

STA 2 in
PS mode

TIM

802.11 MAC (review)

Power Saving: (cont.)

What a STA has to do in PS mode:

Gets beacon, during association, notifies that I shall be in PS-mode, I shall wake-up
every N beacon interval. If the AP accept, STA can switch to sleep mode.
Wakes up prior every N beacon interval (estimate by a local timer), listen to the beacon,
if :
1. Do not heard the beacon: continue to wait for a beacon, sometime the beacons are
delayed due to the busyness of the media.
2. A beacon with DTIM is received, stays awake to receive group data, continues to
awake to get next beacon with TIM, if TIM indicates uni-cast data buffered, send PSpoll to retrieve data, sleeps again when finish or there is not any data.
3. A beacon with TIM is received:
a)Sends PS-poll to retrieve data if TIM indicates uni-cast data buffered.
b)Stays awake to get DTIM (if it is indicated by TIM).
c) Sleeps again when finish or not (a) and (b) aboved.

Note: after retrieves uni-cast data, STA has to stay awake to receive one more beacon to
make sure that the relevant indicator bit is reset.

IEEE 802.11e MAC

Adding new Power Saving Mode

APSD Automatic Power-Save Delivery Enhancing Power-Saving mode in

QoS Basic Service Set, in which:

QAP (QoS_AP AP in 802.11e) automatically delivers downlink frames,

which belong to some specified Access Category, to PS-STAs.

PS-STAs do not need to listen for beacon (to receive TIM or DTIM).

Two types of delivery mechanism

Unscheduled APSD (U-APSD)

Scheduled APSD (S-APSD)

(More details in next slices)

802.11e MAC

Power Saving (cont.)

Unscheduled APSD (U-APSD)

1. Power-saving QSTA wakes up and send a triggerdataframe belonging to triggerenabled AC (Access Category) to QAP
2. After receiving trigger frame, a Service Period (SP) is started
3. QAP send frames belonging to delivery-enabled AC to QSTA
U-APSD is available only for EDCA

IEEE 802.11e MAC

Unscheduled-APSD (cont.)
U-APSD vs legacy power save

802.11e MAC

Power Saving (cont.)

Scheduled APSD (S-APSD)
1. QSTA negotiates a APSD Schedule with QAP
2. QAP start transmitting the frames of the specified Traffic Stream at Service
Start Time and the following periods
3. QSTA must wake up at Service Start Time and the following periods to receive
frames
S-APSD is available for both channel access mechanisms: EDCA and HCCA

802.11 MAC

Power Saving (cont.) - some other Sleep modes

WNM-Sleep (Wireless Network Management Sleep) mode is an extended power save
mode for PS-STAs in that a STA do not need to listen to every DTIM beacon frame. A
PS-STA can sleep in a specified number of DTIM intervals. But WNM-Sleep is
suitable only for a small number of STAs in a BSS, not for 802.11ah, because of:

With WNM-Sleep, TIM in Beacon may be as big as 6000/8 = 750bytes (e.g. when
AID1 and AID5998 have the same awake DTIM and buffered frames at the awake
DTIM). It is difficult for an AP to group STAs with nearby AID to wake up at the same
TBTT beacon interval (e.g. AID 101 to AID 200).
A beacon interval can not finish polling all 6000 STAs in one 100ms beacon interval
given the lower PHY rate of a Smart Grid BSS for e.g. (~hundreds Kbps):
(100bytes MPDU + 14bytes ACK) * 8 /200000= 4.56ms.

Actually transmission time is longer since Backoff, PS Poll, PHY overhead and IFS are
needed.
TIM

STA with AID1 (STA1) negotiates

WNM-Sleep with 2 DTIM intervals.

DTIM

STA1 wakes up.

STA with AID5998 (STA5998) negotiates

WNM-Sleep with 2 DTIM intervals.

STA1 and STA5998 wake up.

802.11 MAC

Power Saving (cont.) - some other Sleep modes

DMS Direct Multicast Service enables a PS-STA to request the AP to

transmit group addressed frames destined to the requesting PS-STA as
individually addressed frames, therefore, it doesn't need to receive DTIM
beacon. But there will be a huge overhead and messages if there are too
many STAs use this method.
PSMP Power Save Multipoll allows the AP to assign an interval to each
station waking in a particular beacon period.

802.11 MAC (review)

Some issues in legacy 802.11 MAC layer:

The PS-STAs have to get both DTIM and TIM to have buffering information about all
kinds of data (broad-cast, multi-cast and uni-cast).
After retrieves uni-cast data, STA has to receive TIM in next beacon to make sure
that the relevant indicator bit was reset, if next beacon is associated with DTIM, it has
to receive one more beacon.
When there is a large number of PS-STAs in a network, the length of the beacon
frame could become extremely long due to the excessive length of the partial virtual
bitmap in TIM (up to 253 bytes). In addition, if the amount of the buffered traffic is too
heavy to be accommodated within a beacon interval, some PS-STAs inevitably stay
awake in a long time to complete the receptions of their buffered packets.
Maximal value of Idle-time is 18.64 hours, somes time it's not enough, for e.g., some
alarm sensors send a packet once a month only to confirm that it's alive for save its
battery.

802.11 MAC (review)

Some issues in legacy 802.11 MAC layer (cont.):

In legacy 802.11 standard, TIM's length will be long if the number of associated PSSTAs is large, and beacon trigger the contention of PS-STAs.
The polling mechanism used by PCF of HCF is not effcient with large number of PSSTAs, when most of them have no data to transmit:

It lead to a huge overhead caused by polling requests

it requires sensor stations to be active and to consume energy till they are polled

PSMP can not support to thousands STAs and it can only schedule a transmission
not far than 8 ms from the end of the frame carrying this schedule

IEEE 802.11ah MAC layer

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

The changes and new concepts

Many changes in MAC layer can be introduced due to there is not backward compactible
requirement:

Some details in MAC-frames and MAC-header are modified to increase number of

associated STAs (from 2007 up to 8191) but decrease the length of TIM, and therefore,
the length of beacon, to reduce awake durations of STAs.
Some MAC-frames are shortened and some new frames are introduced, some details in
MAC-protocol are modified to improve throughput and efficiency, and to better support
Power-Saving Modes for a large number of sensors.
Two-hops communication is accepted to extend the transmission ranges. Some STAs
can also act as Relays to help other STAs forward the frames from/to the AP.
Spatial sectorization is used to reduce contentions and to allow spatial sharing among
overlapping BSS, achieved through a set of antennas or beam-forming technics.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Support for large number of stations

In 802.11, the AP allocates Association IDs - AIDs - to stations that associate with the
AP, the maximum number of IDs that can be allocated in legacy 802.11 is 2007.
In 802.11ah, new AID structure is 13 bits long, leading to a maximum number of
associated stations is 8191 (213-1).
This hierarchical AID is split into four levels: page; block (or group); sub-block; and
station index within the sub-block.
The structure of new AID:

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Increment of doze-state duration

In legacy 802.11 networks, the duration of the doze state (sleeping states) is limited
by Max idle period, which is determin by a 16-bit coefficient, time unit is 1024ms,
thus, maximal value is 18.64 hours.
In 802.11ah, two most-significant bits of the Max idle period field is used as scaling
factor, values 00, 01, 10, 11 represent scaling factors 1, 10, 1000, 10 000
respectively, and so, maximal value of Max idle period is 2500 times greater (upto
more than 5 years).
In legacy 802.11
Max idle period = 16-bit coefficient x 1024ms

Max idle
period value

Max idle period = scale factor x 14-bit coefficient x 1024ms

x x
In 802.11ah

00 scaling by 1
01 scaling by 10
10 scaling by 1000
11 scaling by 10000
Max idle period = 14-bit coefficient x 1024ms x scaling factor

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Fast association and authentication

When AP (re)boots, thousands of STAs simultaneously requesting

association/authentication: collapse channel access
Centralized approach

STAs choose a number [0, 1023] at random

AP sets an Authentication Control Threshold (announced in Beacons)
STAs with random number < threshold are allowed to attempt authentication
(otherwise, wait for next Beacon)
Distributed approach

STAs wait a random time (e.g. several Beacon intervals) before attempting
authentication
Each unsuccessful attempt increases window

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Shorten MAC headers

Remove some fields (Duration, QoScontrol, HT control, optionally Sequence

control)
Option to use only two addresses (instead of three) Option to use 2B AID
instead of 6B MAC address
Example: send frame with 100 Bytes of data
Legacy: 100B of data + 36B of header + FCS 26%overhead!
11ah short MAC header: 100B of data + 14B of header + FCS 12% overhead

Legacy MAC header

Short MAC header

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Use NDP (NULL Data Packet) frames of PHY layer
NDP frames are the PHY frames, in 802.11ac, they are used for channel calibration
needed for beamforming and do not have any payload from the MAC layer.
In 802.11ah, some informations of MAC layer are moved into SIG field of PHY
frame's headers and these PHY frames are used to replace many of MAC control frames
(to eliminate MAC header + payload), for example, the PHY header of NDP ACK contains:

ACK ID containing some bits from the received frame to reduce probability of
false positive acknowledgment.
Duration field which either has the legacy interpretation or is used by power
saving mechanisms.
More Data field indicating whether the NDP ACK transmitter has data to transmit
to the NDP ACK receiver, etc...

Example: 11ah transmission of 100B frame at lowest rate (1MHz x NSS 1 x MCS10)
takes ~8ms
Legacy ACK: ~1.5ms (20% of the data frame!)
NDP ACK: ~0.5ms (6% of the data frame)
Many other NDP frames were defined, for e.g.: NDP CTS, NDP PS-Poll, NDP BlockAck,
NDP Probe Request, etc...

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Short beacons
Another source of excessive overhead is beacon, beacon content depends on the mode
in which the AP is operating, its length may exceed 100 bytes.
In 802.11ah, to be received by the edge STAs, beacons should be sent at the lowest
rate (less than 1Mbps), hence they occupy significant percentage of channel time.
To reduce medium occupancy, 2 types of beacon are used: full and short, short beacons
are sent more frequently than the full ones.

Full beacons have the same elements as legacy beacons.

Short beacons do not contain:

destination address, since beacons are always broadcast

BSSID, since it is the same as the sender address

sequence control, since it is useless.

Some fields and information elements are shortened.

Almost unchangeable information elements are excluded from short beacons.

To notify STA about updates, short beacons contain a one-byte Change Sequence
Field incremented with every critical update. Having received a short beacon with a
new value in this field, a STA waits for a full beacon to get updated information.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Types of Stations (STA) and Basic Service Sets (BSS)

IEEE 802.11ah classifies the stations (STAs) in many ways and into different groups:
Sensor stations & Offloading stations: (based on traffic)

Sensor STAs or Z-class STAs are the STAs transmit low traffic of short packets, they
are also expected to have limited available power.The number of sensor STAs
associated to an AP may reach 6000.
Offloading stations or H-class stations can transmit intensive traffic. This type includes
laptops, wireless cameras, gadgets offloading data. It is unlikely that more than a
hundred of such devices are associated to an AP.

TIM stations & non-TIM stations: (based on scheduling method to access to media)

TIM STAs: They have to listen to both DTIM and TIM beacons to send or receive data.

Non-TIM STAs: They only have to listen to DTIM beacons to send or receive data.

Unscheduled STAs: These STAs do not need to listen to beacons, they can transmit
data anytime that they wake up.

And the BSSs are also classified:

Sensor only BSS,

Non-sensor only BSS, containing only non-sensor networks,

Mixed mode, when the AP supports both sensors and non-sensors.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Some new or improve scheduling/accessing methods

IEEE802.11ah uses some more scheduling mechanisms for STAs:

TIM Segmentation mechanism is used to reduce contention probability of TIMSTAs, in that, each beacon is sent with a part of TIM only, thus the number of STAs
triggered after that beacon is not too large.
Restricted access window (RAW) divides STAs into groups and splits the channel
into slots. Then it assign each group to a slot and STAs can transmit only in their
slots. In 802.11e, it's used to increase throughput, but in 802.11ah, the target is
extend the life-time of PS-sensors (Z-class STAs).
Transmit Opportunity (TXOP) is used to allocate the temporary RAWs to STAs. As
like as RAW, in 802.11ah, this one is used to protect the PS-sensors from
collisions, to reduce the awaken time of STAs.
Target Wake Time (TWT), a new version of APSD, allows the PS-STAs sleep in
long time and wake up on appointment which is made with the AP before.

Some details of these mechanisms will be described here after.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

TIM segmentation (or TIM slicing)

TIM segmentation is an improved version of Power Save Multipoll, but more scalable,
simpler in implementation and generates much less overhead.

TIM can be splitted into the slices and be sent in seperated beacons, each slice may
contain infomations for upto 4 blocks (4 groups of STAs) in 4 different pages.
DTIM contain one or several Page Slice information elements (PSIE), unique for each
page period (or DTIM period).

PSIE indicates number of TIM slices, their positions regarding current beacon,
number of blocks in each slice, etc.
PSIE includes a Page Bitmap which indicates the presence of buffered data for
each block in all of slices.

DTIM beacons contain DTIM and first TIM slice.

Thus, having received an PSIE (in DTIM beacon), an STA knows whether the AP has
buffered data destined for its block or not,

if not, it can sleep until the end of the page period.

if PSIE indicates that a block has frames destined for it, and corresponding TIM
slice is not included in that beacon, all of STAs in that block calculate the moment
when their TIM slice will be transmitted, and stay doze until that moment.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

TIM segmentation (cont.)

Hierachical AID in IEEE802.11ah (review)

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

TIM segmentation (cont.)

An example in which the number of STAs is smaller than 2048 (1 page) and only the STAs
#1538 and #1539 have data frames buffered on AP.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

TIM segmentation (cont.)

When the number of STAs greater than 1 AID page (greater than 2048), two signaling
methods can be used: non-TIM offset or TIM offset:
1. Non-TIM offset: The signaling information of a particular TIM group is transmitted in
the same beacon as many times as the number of network pages (upto 4 pages).
This is the default mode in IEEE 802.11ah.This fact implies that the STAs are forced
to listen the information related to pages that they do not belong to.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

TIM segmentation (cont.)

TIM offset: In this mode, a 5-bit field in the DTIM beacon that allows each TIM group in
4 different pages to be separately scheduled over their own TIM beacons (up to 32
positions in 4 pages, 8 TIM beacons per page).

The TIM offset mode has lower energy consumption than the non-TIM offset mode.
However, its behavior with respect to the maximum number of stations supported,
packet delivery ratio (PDR), and network efficiency is slightly worse.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

TIM segmentation (or TIM slicing)

An e.g. in that:

The STAs which have buffered data on the AP are spread out into 19 different TIM
groups and in 4 different pages.
TIM offset is used, thus there is only one block (or one TIM group) in each slice, TIM
is segmented into 19 slices

Non-TIM offset is used (in left-side figure),

there are, maybe, upto 4 block in each slice,
TIM is segmented into 6 slices, the
informations in TIM7..TIM19 (of above figure)
are included in TIM1..TIM6. An STA has to
wake up 4 or 5 times in a page period.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Restricted Access Window RAW

RAW provide the low-contention periods to improve power efficiency.
To do that, the AP asigns the groups of STAs and RAWs, in which allocates the time-slots,
each RAW is assigned to a group and a STA can transmit in its slot only.
DTIM-1
RAW

TIM-1.1
RAW

TIM-1.2
RAW

TIM-1.3
RAW

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Restricted Access Window (cont.)

Many RAWs can be asigned inside a beacon interval.

Optionally, the AP allows STAs to exceed their slots (Cross Slot Boundary) when transmitting or counting down backoff. It's not faire
(an STA in a slot contend with the others in next slot) but in some cases, it can help us improve channel efficiency.

Beacon
RAW-1

TIM

...

RAW-i

...

RAW-n

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Restricted Access Window some more details

During RAW, only a set of STAs determined by the lowest and the highest AIDs, both
from the same page, can access the medium.
Each RAW consists of NRAW < 64 equal time slots corresponding to various stations.
Due to the frame format, if NRAW < 8, each slot may reach 246.14 ms. Otherwise, the
slot duration is limited to 31.1 ms. During RAW, each station is forbidden to access the
channel before its slot, which is calculated as follows:
islot=(x+Noffset)mod(NRAW)

(1)

where NRAW is the number of slots, Noffset is a parameter to improve fairness and equals
two least significant bytes of the beacon FCS,and x is determined as follows:
If the RAW is restricted to stations with AID bits in the TIM element set to 1, x is the
position index of the station among others. Otherwise, x is the station AID. Note that
rule (1) means that a group of stations may access the channel in a slot.
To access the channel in its RAW slot, a station uses EDCA (new version of DCF from
802.11e), however, backoff functions inside and outside RAW are different, since
contention conditions differ.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Transmit Opportunity TXOP

TXOP - a concept has been approved in 802.11e, widely used in 802.11n - is used with 2 variants: Bi Directional TXOP BDT and
TXOP Sharing.

BDT is used to reduce transaction time in single-hop,

TXOP sharing is used in two-hop communication.

TXOP-based Sectorization scheme allows STAs of a BSS and STAs of an overlapping BSS to transmit their data simultaneously.

In TXOP, the AP use virtual carrier sense (NAV or RID) to reserve channel temporarily to transfer few consecutive data frames and
ACK frames between AP and a STA, therefore the sender has to delay a SIFS (16us) instead of DIFS (34us) between frames and
without contention.

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Transmit Opportunity TXOP (cont.)

Relay without
TXOP sharing

Relay with TXOP sharing

and explicit ACK

Relay with TXOP sharing

and implicit ACK

IEEE 802.11ah MAC

Target Wake Time (TWT)

TWT Target Wake Time mechanism is used for very low power STAs, in that, STAs do not need to receive the
beacons. A STA like that can makes appointment with the AP to schedule a series of times where it will wake up,
the AP will reserve a gap of time to wait for it or a small group of STAs which are made appointment in the
same gap of time.
For this purpose, an AP may setup RAW(s) for non-TIM STAs and then indicate to TIM STAs RAW information
during which no TIM STA is allowed to contend. The RAW(s) is used for protecting either TWT(s) scheduled by the
AP or specific interval(s) for non-TIM STAs.
Some modification in MAC layer are used to perform the timer synchronization function (TSF) for these STAs. Direct
Multicast Service DMS may also used to transmit group addressed frames destined to these STAs as individually
addressed frames, therefore, it doesn't need to receive DTIM beacon.

Wake-up
SM

LM

Sleep again
UL

BA

DL

BA

TM

RM

RM

TM

SM

Annex A

Legacy 802.11's beacon contents

Beacon Interval
Timestamp: Timing Synchronization Function (TSF) keeps the timers for all stations - counting in
increments of microseconds with modulus 264 - in the same Basic Service Set (BSS) - are
synchronized. Upon receiving a beacon, a station sets its TSF timer to the timestamp of the
beacon if the value of the timestamp is later than the stations TSF timer. On a commercial level,
the vendors assume the TSF's differences in a BSS will be within 25 microseconds.

SSID service set ID

Supported rates

Parameters Sets: parameter of signaling method, i.e. DS, FH, OFDM,...

Capability information: signifies requirements to associate (WEP, WPS,...)

Traffic Indication Map (TIM or DTIM Delivery TIM) (if there is any associated PS-STA).

In ad hoc networks, there are no access points. As a result, one of peer stations assumes the
responsibility for sending the beacon. After receiving a beacon frame, each station waits for the
beacon interval and then sends a beacon if no other station does so after a random time delay.
This ensures that at least one station will send a beacon, and the random delay rotates the
responsibility for sending beacons.

Annex B

Closely related standards

802.11af: White-Fi
802.11e: QoS it is an approved amendment to the 802.11
802.11s: mesh networking
802.11ax: MIMO-OFDM
802.11u: interworking with external networks

Annex C
802.11e - QoS

802.11e-2005 is an approved amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard that defines a set of quality
of service (QoS) enhancements for wireless LAN applications through modifications to the MAC
layer.
The 802.11e enhances the DCF and the PCF, through a new coordination function: the hybrid
coordination function (HCF).
Within the HCF, there are two methods of channel access, similar to those defined in the legacy
802.11 MAC:

HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) works a lot like PCF and:
Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) uses TXOP (Transmit Opportunity) to provide
contention-free periods to access the channel in DCF period when need.
Both EDCA and HCCA define Traffic Categories (TC). For example,

emails could be assigned to a low priority class, and

Video or Voice over Wireless LAN could be assigned to a high priority class.

HCCA is generally considered the most advanced (and complex) coordination function. Implementing
the HCCA on end stations uses the existing DCF mechanism for channel access (no change to DCF or
EDCA operation is needed). Stations only need to be able to respond to poll messages!

Annex D

Block Acknowledgement

Block Acknowledgement (BA) was initially defined in IEEE 802.11e as an optional

scheme to improve the MAC efficiency. Recently ratified amendment 802.11n
enhances this BA mechanism then made it as mandatory to support by all 802.11ncapable devices (formally known as HT - High Throughput devices).
Instead of transmitting an individual ACK for every MPDU (i.e. frame), multiple
MPDUs can be acknowledged together using a single BA frame. Block Ack (BA)
contains bitmap size of 64*16 bits. These 16 bits accounts the fragment number of
the MPDUs to be acknowledged. Each bit of this bitmap represent the status
(success/failure) of a MPDU.
Block acknowledgement consist of a setup and tear-down phases. In the setup
phase, capability information such as buffer size and BA policy are negotiated with
the receiver. Once the setup phase completed, the transmitter can send frames
without waiting for ACK frame. Finally the BA agreement is torn down with a so-called
DELBA frame.

Annex E

Resource Allocation
The RA - Resource Allocation frame has been proposed. It contains the scheduling
information of each individual station, through which the station can learn the time
slot during which it is allowed to conduct medium access for uplink or downlink
transmission. RA frame is transmitted at the beginning of each RAW and all the
stations assigned to that RAW have to wake up to receive it.
In the PS-poll frame, a special field called Uplink Data Indication (UDI) is added, it is
used to indicate the existence of the uplink frame of a station, and a station with no
buffered downlink frame, can send the PS-poll with UDI field set to 1, to request the
time slot for its uplink transmission. After receiving both normal PS-poll and UDI PSpoll, the AP then can adaptively determine how to schedule the uplink and downlink
transmissions efficiently, and the scheduling information is contained in the RA
frame.

Annex F

Sync frame operation

Sync frame transmission procedure for uplink traffic, which minimizes the time for
medium synchronization for a STA that is changing from Doze to Awake in order to
transmit.
A STA may request to an UL-Sync capable AP to transmit a sync frame at the slot
boundary of the STA in a RAW or at the target wake time of the STA.
When a STA is requesting for the sync frame transmission, a STA may also request to
AP to:

protect a RAW slot in a RAW or

a time duration at a TWT or may also

request to AP protection for a TXOP duration after the expiration of a wakeup timer.

Annex F

Sync frame operation (cont.)

For e.g., STA1 is allocated Slot1 in the RAW and STA2 is allocated Slot3 in the RAW.
Both STA1 and STA2 have requested the UL-Sync capable AP to transmit a sync frame
at the slot boundary. At the slot boundary of Slot1, the medium is idle and thus the AP
transmits a sync frame at the slot boundary. However, at the slot boundary of Slot3, the
medium is busy and thus the AP cancels the scheduled sync frame transmission for
STA2.