Toward Wi-Fi 8 Standard: A Survey of State-of-the-Art Technologies

Abstract

With the emergence of new applications such as collaborative mobile robots and immersive communications, the stringent requirements on the reliability and latency are far beyond the capabilities of existing wireless local area networks (WLANs) standards. To meet these demands, IEEE 802.11 standard organization has established a working group to revise the existing WLAN standard with a aim to achieve ultra-high reliability (UHR) and ultra-low latency. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of key technologies on physical layer and medium access control layer discussed in the UHR working group. Specifically, it focuses primarily on the related progress of the technologies, such as double low-density parity-check codeword lengths, a new modulation and coding scheme as well as unequal modulation techniques, distributed resource units, multi-access point coordination techniques, non-primary channel access, and seamless roaming, etc. Meanwhile, this paper further reviews the progress related to the low-high frequency common baseband technologies. Finally, a few potential research directions beyond the state-of-the-art technologies discussed in the working group are discussed for the development of WLAN technologies.