There are a lot of blogs, podcast and videos at the internet explaining 802.11ax at a high level. And some have done testing with 802.11ax compatible devices. But I have not found anyone that explains 802.11ax at a deep level. So why not me
The last year, since I bought the Perahia and Staceys book “Next Generation Wireless LANs”, I have been interested in the PHY-level of 802.11. And to go deep at 802.11ax I had to buy the 802.11ax, Draft 4.0.
There are so many new topics in the 802.11ax technologies so I had to make usecases for some of the topics and I have choosen the MU OFDMA process. This first blogarticle, in a series of articles, are about the frame where the AP sends data down to stations that needs data, the DL MU OFDMA frame. This frame is sent in i HE MU PPDU format, one of the four different frame formats in the 802.11ax standard.
Later on I will cover other aspect of the MU OFMDA process, like the MU-RTS/CTS process, the uplink OFDMA (UL MU OFDMA) process and the Acknowledgement process
Nothing of this is testet in real world, it’s picked out of the 802.11ax draft
DL MU OFDMA
DL MU OFDMA is the process where the AP sends data down to several stations that need/want data in a parallell process. In this slides I have used a example where four stations receives data in parallell. The AP have, before it starts to send data, decided how it should allocate its RUs.
A overview of this frame (PPDU) is like this

The presentation (slides) could be downloaded at this link (pdf)
DL OFDMA, bit-by-bit
If someone have constructive feedback I would be grateful
Useful links
- Cleartosend 802.11ax podcast-series, link
- David Colemans presentation at WLPC_US 2019, link
- Wifininjas, link
- IEEE 802.11ax draft 4.0 ($400), link