A modeling of OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Divison Multiple Access) for the Wi-Fi 11ax (alias Wi-Fi 6) within the open source network simulator ns-3

ns-3 is an open source network simulator targeted primarily for research and educational use. Considering its broad use, and the number of modelled technologies (see main models and its App store), ns-3 has become a reference tool for Wi-Fi studies, among others.

The latest Wi-Fi generation, Wi-Fi 6, comes with a promising technique: the OFDMA. The OFDMA’s modeling within ns-3 resulted from a strong collaboration between Orange, the University of Naples, the University of Washington and Intel. The code has been published on the official ns-3 GitLab repository, and is publicly available for use under the terms of the GPL v2.0 license.

This enhancement enables to assess the performance of Wi-Fi 6, as illustrated in ‘Will OFDMA Improve the Performance of 802.11 Wi-Fi Networks?‘.