This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts

for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

IEEE 802.11ac: Dynamic Bandwidth Channel

Access
Minyoung Park
Intel Labs, Intel Corporation
2111 NE 25th Ave. Hillsboro, OR, 97124, USA
Email: [email protected]

AbstractIEEE 802.11ac is enhancing throughput beyond

IEEE 802.11n using an 80 MHz channel bonding technique. In
this paper, we first overview the static 40 MHz and the dynamic
20/40 MHz bandwidth channel access schemes defined in
802.11n. We then extend the schemes to the IEEE 802.11ac for
an 80 MHz wide channel and study the static and dynamic
channel access schemes. The simulation results show that
dynamically switching between 20, 40, and 80 MHz bandwidths
based on the clear channel assessment (CCA) result of each 20
MHz channel outperforms the static 80 MHz scheme by 85 % in
terms of throughput when the secondary channels are occupied
by the 802.11a stations with moderate traffic loads. The paper
also investigates the effects of the secondary channel CCA
sensitivity and the primary channel selection on the 802.11ac
throughput.
Index Terms 802.11ac, 802.11n, WLAN, dynamic bandwidth
channel access, static bandwidth channel access
I.

INTRODUCTION

Since 2008, IEEE 802.11ac Task Group (TG) has been

developing an amendment to IEEE 802.11 PHY and MAC
layers to meet growing demands of new wireless applications
that require higher data rates [1]. In order to increase the PHY
rate, the group is considering an 80 MHz channel bonding
technique that bonds two adjacent 40 MHz channels [2].
Although the 80 MHz channel bonding technique sounds
very simple, efficiently utilizing the 80 MHz wide channel is
challenging due to legacy 802.11a and 802.11n [3] stations
operating in 20 or 40 MHz wide channels. As more and more
devices are wirelessly connected to the Internet and wireless
networks are deployed more densely, new 802.11ac networks
are expected to have less chance to operate in its full 80 MHz
bandwidth but will have to efficiently share the 80 MHz
channel with the legacy 802.11a/n networks operating in the
overlapping narrower channels.
The purpose of the paper is to first understand the static 40
MHz and the dynamic 20/40 MHz bandwidth channel access
rules defined in 802.11n. The 802.11n 40 MHz channel
consists of the primary and the secondary 20 MHz channels.
The static 40 MHz bandwidth channel access scheme only
transmits 40 MHz wide signals if the primary and the
secondary channels are idle. If the secondary channel is busy,

it will wait for the 40 MHz channel to be idle. On the other

hand, the dynamic 20/40 MHz bandwidth channel access
scheme may transmit 20 MHz data over the primary channel if
the secondary channel is busy.
We extend 802.11ns static and the dynamic bandwidth
channel access rules to the 802.11ac 80 MHz channel, which
consists of one primary channel and three secondary channels
[4]. We simulate and compare the throughput of the static 80
MHz and the dynamic 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth channel
access schemes when there are legacy 20 MHz 802.11a
stations operating in the secondary channels. The simulation
results clearly show that the dynamic bandwidth channel
access scheme outperforms the static bandwidth channel
access scheme when the secondary channels of the 80 MHz
channel are occupied by the 20 MHz 802.11a stations with a
moderate level of traffic loads. We also investigate the effects
of the secondary channel CCA (clear channel assessment)
sensitivity and the primary channel selection schemes on the
802.11ac throughput.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, 802.11ns
static 40 MHz and dynamic 20/40 MHz bandwidth channel
access rules are described. In Section III, we extend the
802.11ns rules to the 802.11ac 80 MHz channel and discuss
some of the issues. In Section IV, the simulation results are
presented and finally in Section V, we draw conclusions.
II. OVERVIEW ON IEEE 802.11N 40MHZ CHANNEL ACCESS
802.11n enhanced the physical layer throughput by adopting
two major techniques: i) a multiple-input-multiple-output
(MIMO) technique called spatial multiplexing and ii) the 40
MHz channel bonding technique. In this section, we will
focus on the 40 MHz channel bonding and describe the 40
MHz channel access rules defined in 802.11n to understand
the implication of extending the rules to the 802.11ac 80 MHz
channel access.
A. 40 MHz Channelization
802.11n defines the 40 MHz channelization in the 5 GHz band
for US, Europe, and Japan. Currently, there are eleven 40
MHz channels defined in the UNII (Unlicensed National
Information Infrastructure) bands. The 40 MHz channels are
allocated in such a way that one 40 MHz channel does not
overlap with its adjacent 40 MHz channels. This is to prevent
the 40 MHz channels from partially overlapping with

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neighboring channels, which provides better coexistence with

neighboring networks.
A 40 MHz channel consists of two 20 MHz channels: the
primary channel and the secondary channel. The differences
of the two channels are as follows:
1) CCA (Clear Channel Assessment) sensitivity:
The CCA sensitivity level of the primary channel is much
lower than that of the secondary channel. The CCA
sensitivity level of the primary channel is -82 dBm for a
valid 802.11n 20 MHz signal and -79 dBm for a valid
802.11n 40 MHz signal, whereas the CCA sensitivity level
of the secondary channel is -62 dBm [3]. The CCA
sensitivity level of -82 dBm requires a receiver to be able
to detect the structure of the 802.11n signal such as the
preamble of the signal. The CCA sensitivity level of -62
dBm can be achieved by a simple energy detection scheme
and therefore extra decoding is not required in the
secondary channel.
2) NAV (Network Allocation Vector) setting: The 802.11
packets received in the primary channel are decoded and
the duration field of the MAC header is used to set the
NAV so that a neighboring station can defer its
transmission and does not cause collision to the ongoing
transmissions. An 802.11n station operating in the 40
MHz mode, however, does not require its NAV to be set
based on the packets received in the secondary channel [3].
This implies that when a legacy 802.11a network is
operating on the secondary channel of the 802.11n
network, the 802.11n network will have less information
about the neighboring 802.11a network than what the
802.11a network knows about the 802.11n network.
B. 40 MHz Transmission Rules
802.11n defines a 20/40MHz station which is capable of
communicating over 20 MHz and 40 MHz bandwidths. The
40 MHz transmission rules in 802.11n are as follows:
The start time of a packet transmission is solely based on the
primary channel CCA result. The 802.11n station checks if

the primary channel has been idle for a DIFS (DCF

(distributed coordination function) inter-frame spacing) plus
the backoff counter time. If the primary channel has been idle
for the duration of time and if the secondary channel has also
been idle for a PIFS (PCF (point coordination function) interframe spacing) duration of time immediately preceding the
expiration of the backoff counter, the station may transmit a
40 MHz signal. However, if the secondary channel was not
idle during this interval, the station has two choices:
Static 40 MHz bandwidth channel access: the station may
reattempt to access the 40 MHz channel by restarting the
channel access attempt with a new random number
chosen from its current contention window size for the
backoff counter.
Dynamic 20/40 MHz bandwidth channel access: the
station may transmit a 20 MHz signal only on the primary
channel.
III. IEEE 802.11AC DYNAMIC 20/40/80 MHZ BANDWIDTH
CHANNEL ACCESS
Similar approach described in the previous section can be
extended and applied to the 80 MHz wide channel for
802.11ac. In this section, we describe the benefits of the
dynamic 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth channel access in the 80
MHz bandwidth, the issue of the secondary channel CCA
sensitivity, and the effect of the primary channel selection on
the 802.11ac performance.
A. Overlapping 802.11a/n and 802.11ac Networks
As the channel bandwidth gets wider and as a networking
environment gets denser due to ever increasing number of
wireless devices, it gets harder for an 802.11ac AP (access
point) to find a clean 80 MHz wide channel. Therefore, an 80
MHz 802.11ac network is more likely to share the frequency
channels with neighboring legacy 802.11a/n networks
operating on 20 or 40 MHz channels. As more and more
802.11n networks are operating in the secondary channels of
11ac (80MHz)

Primary
channel

DIFS

Secondary
channel-1

DIFS

CW

DIFS

CW

PIFS

CW

DIFS
PIFS

CW

DIFS

CW

DIFS

CW
PIFS

PIFS

20MHz PPDU

Secondary
channel-2

80MHz PPDU
80MHz PPDU

DIFS

CW

20MHz PPDU

80MHz PPDU

Secondary
Channel-3

80MHz PPDU

3
11a/11n
(20MHz)

(a)
Primary
channel

DIFS

CW

DIFS 20MHz
CWPPDU DIFS

PIFS

Secondary
channel-1

DIFS

CW

Static 80 MHz bandwidth channel access

20MHz PPDU

Secondary
channel-2

DIFS

CW

DIFS 40MHz
CW PPDU

PIFS

PIFS

CW

CW

80MHz PPDU

PIFS

40MHz PPDU
DIFS

DIFS

20MHz PPDU

Secondary
Channel-3

80MHz PPDU
80MHz PPDU
80MHz PPDU

(b)

Dynamic 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth channel access

Fig. 1 Illustration of 802.11ac (a) static 80 MHz and (b) dynamic 20/40/80 MHz channel access schemes (CW=contention window)

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Primary
channel

DIFS

CW

80MHz PPDU

PIFS

Secondary
channel-1

DIFS CW

20MHz PPDU

80MHz PPDU

collision

Secondary
channel-2

80MHz PPDU

Secondary
Channel-3

80MHz PPDU

Fig. 2 Illustration of the collision problem due to the secondary channel

CCA sensitivity level

the 802.11ac network, the throughput of the 802.11ac network

may degrade more. Thus, it is important to use the frequency
resource efficiently by dynamically changing the bandwidth
amongst 20, 40, and 80 MHz.
B. Dynamic 20/40/80 MHz Bandwidth Channel Access
If we extend the 40 MHz transmission rules described in the
previous section to 802.11ac, an 802.11ac station may transmit
an 80 MHz PPDU (PLCP (physical layer convergence
procedure) protocol data unit) when the primary channel has
been idle for a DIFS plus the backoff counter and the three
secondary channels have been idle for a PIFS immediately
preceding the expiration of the backoff counter. This is shown
in the last part of Fig. 1(a). However, if one or more
secondary channels are busy, the 802.11ac station may have
two choices similar to the 802.11n rules:
1) Static 80 MHz bandwidth channel access: the station
may reattempt to access the 80 MHz channel by restarting
the channel access attempt with a random number chosen
from its current contention window size for the backoff
counter. This is illustrated in Fig. 1(a). In the example,
there are five legacy 20 MHz 802.11a/n stations on the
three secondary channels of the 802.11ac station operating
in the 80 MHz mode. If one of the secondary channels is
busy, the 802.11ac station continues channel access
attempt until all the secondary channels are idle. As more
legacy stations operates in the secondary channels or as the
traffic load increases, the 802.11ac gets less chance to
access the medium and thus throughput degrades. This
problem gets worse as the bandwidth gets wider. The
simulation results are shown in Section IV.
2) Dynamic 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth channel access:
the station may transmit data over a narrower channel with
a bandwidth of 20 or 40 MHz depending on the CCA
results of the secondary channels. This is illustrated in
Fig. 1(b). When the secondary channels are busy, the
802.11ac station uses a narrower bandwidth (e.g. 20 MHz
or 40 MHz) for data transmissions. This approach utilizes
the frequency resource more efficiently than the static
approach. Since the receiver has to know the channel over
which the transmitter will use to transmit data, it is better
to have the primary channel included in the 20 MHz or 40
MHz bandwidth transmissions.
C. Secondary Channel CCA Sensitivity
Fig. 2 illustrates the collision problem between a 20 MHz
transmission from an 802.11a/n station on the first secondary

(a)

(b)

Fig. 3 Illustration of the primary channel selection for 802.11ac: (a) the
primary channel at the start of an 80 MHz channel and (b) in the middle
of the 80 MHz channel. (P=primary channel, S1~S3: the three secondary
channels)

channel and an 80 MHz transmission from an 802.11ac station

due to the secondary channel CCA sensitivity being too high.
The example assumes that the 802.11ac has the primary
channel CCA sensitivity level of -82 dBm and the secondary
channel CCA sensitivity level of -62 dBm. Therefore, if the
received signal power at the secondary channel of the
802.11ac station is higher than -82 dBm but lower than -62
dBm, the 802.11ac station will consider the secondary channel
to be idle and transmit an 80 MHz wide signal, which may
collide with the transmission on the secondary channel.
One way to address this problem is to have better CCA in
the secondary channels so that the 802.11ac stations can better
detect the signals in the secondary channels and avoid the
collisions. One way to achieve lower secondary channel
sensitivity is to exploit the transmission signal structure such
as the preamble structure or the OFDM signal structure [5].
D. Primary Channel Selection
The position of the primary channel within the four 20 MHz
channels may impact the 802.11ac throughput when the
stations are using the dynamic bandwidth channel access
scheme.
An 802.11ac AP may place the primary channel at the start
or end of the 80 MHz channel as shown in Fig. 3(a) or in the
middle of the 80 MHz channel as shown in Fig. 3(b). When
the primary channel is placed at the start or end of the 80 MHz
channel, 40 MHz PPDUs can be transmitted only over the
primary channel P and the adjacent secondary channel S1, i.e.
(P+S1). If S1 is busy, the station has to fall back to 20 MHz
and use only the primary channel for 20 MHz PPDU
transmissions. However, if the primary channel is placed in
the middle of the 80 MHz channel, as shown in Fig. 3(b), the
802.11ac station has one more option to transmit 40 MHz
PPDUs. For example, when the secondary channel S2 is busy,
it can use (S1+P) for 40 MHz transmissions. When S1 is
busy, it can still use (P+S2) for 40 MHz transmissions, which
will help improve the throughput of the 802.11ac station when
the secondary channels are busy.
There is, however, a possibility of the 40 MHz
transmissions, (P+S2), across the 40 MHz channel boundary
partially overlapping with another 40 MHz 802.11n BSS
(basic service set) operating in (S2+S3). If S2 is also the
secondary channel of the 40 MHz 802.11n BSS, the secondary
channels of the 802.11ac and the 802.11n BSSs are

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TABLE I
SIMULATION PARAMETERS OF 802.11A
Packet size

20 MHz

54 Mbps

1500 bytes

Transmission
Probability
0~1

TABLE II
SIMULATION PARAMETERS OF 802.11AC
Bandwidth

PHY rate

Packet size

20 MHz
40 MHz
80 MHz

130 Mbps
270 Mbps
540 Mbps

1500 x 2.4 bytes

1500 x 5 bytes
1500 x 10 bytes

Transmission
Probability
1
1
1

overlapping with each other and since the 802.11n may not be
able to decode the packets received from its secondary
channel, S2, the 802.11acs 40 MHz transmissions on (P+ S2)
may collide with the 802.11ns 40 MHz transmissions on
(S2+S3). This problem may be addressed by allowing the
802.11acs 40 MHz transmissions across P and S2 only if S2
is the primary channel of the 40 MHz 802.11n BSS.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, the benefit of the dynamic bandwidth channel
access over the static bandwidth channel access is quantified
through MATLAB simulations. The secondary channel CCA
sensitivity and the primary channel selection results are also
presented.
A. Simulation Setup
The wireless networking environment is configured to have
one 802.11ac BSS with one 802.11ac AP and one 802.11ac
station (STA), and one to three 802.11a BSSs each with one
802.11a AP and one or two 802.11a STAs. This is similar to
the configuration shown in Fig. 1.
The simulation parameters for 802.11a and 802.11ac are
shown in Table I and Table II. In order to have similar
transmission air time between different bandwidth modes, the
packet sizes are increased for the wider bandwidth modes.
Two spatial streams are assumed for the 802.11ac STAs. All
the PHY rates of the 802.11ac STA are derived from the
802.11n PHY rates.
B. Static versus Dynamic Bandwidth Channel Access
Fig. 4 compares the average throughput of the 802.11ac STA
when (a) using the static 80 MHz bandwidth channel access
scheme and (b) using the dynamic 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth
channel access scheme. The received power on each 20 MHz
channel is assumed to be higher than -62 dBm. The
transmission probability of the 802.11a STAs is varied from 0
to 1 to show the effect of the traffic load in the secondary
channels on the 802.11ac throughput, while the transmission
probability of the 802.11ac STA is fixed to 1 meaning that the
802.11ac STA always has data to transmit. The number of 20
MHz 802.11a STAs are increased from 1 to 5. The first,
second, and third 802.11a STAs are operating in the first,
second, and third secondary channels and the fourth and the
fifth 802.11a STAs are operating on the first and the second
secondary channels as shown in Fig. 1(a). In the simulations,
we assume that the 802.11a signals received in the secondary
channels of the 802.11ac STA are above the secondary

11ac Average Throughput (Mbps)

PHY rate

350
300

802.11a

250

Tx Prob.=1
Tx Prob.=0.8

200

Tx Prob.=0.6

150

Tx Prob.=0.4

100

Tx Prob.=0.2
Tx Prob.=0

50
0
1

Number of 20 MHz STAs in the secondary channels

(a)

Static bandwidth channel access

400
11ac Average Throughput (Mbps)

Bandwidth

400

350
300

802.11a

250

Tx Prob.=1

200

Tx Prob.=0.8
Tx Prob.=0.6

150

Tx Prob.=0.4

100

Tx Prob.=0.2
Tx Prob.=0

50
0
1

Number of 20 MHz STAs in the secondary channels

(b)

Dynamic bandwidth channel access

Fig. 4 802.11ac average throughput measurement results

TABLE III
DYNAMIC VERSUS STATIC BANDWIDTH CHANNEL ACCESS THROUGHPUT
COMPARISON (THREE 802.11A STAS CASE)
802.11a Tx Prob.

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

Static (Mbps)
Dynamic (Mbps)
Gain

16.2
109
569 %

44.4
137
209 %

92
170
85 %

160
215
34 %

242
274
13 %

channel CCA threshold and thus the 802.11ac STA can detect
the 802.11a transmissions.
The simulation results show that, when there is only one
802.11a STA occupying the first secondary channel of the
802.11ac, the throughput of the 802.11ac STA does not
improve but decreases when the load of the 802.11a STA is
high (i.e. the transmission probability of 0.8 and 1). This is
because when the static 80 MHz bandwidth channel access
scheme is used, the 802.11ac and the 802.11a have similar
chance to access the medium and thus the 802.11ac STA
transmits 80 MHz signals for half the time and for the rest of
the time deferring. Whereas when the dynamic 20/40/80 MHz
bandwidth channel access scheme is used, if the first
secondary channel is heavily loaded by the 802.11a STA, the
802.11ac STA will most of the time fall back to 20 MHz,
which effectively makes the 802.11ac and the 802.11a
networks to use non-overlapping two 20 MHz channels.
However, as the number 802.11a STAs increases and more
secondary channels are occupied by the 802.11a STAs, the
dynamic bandwidth channel access scheme performs much

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400

100
Primary channel in the middle

350

300

802.11ac throughput (Mbps)

Throughput (Mbps)

350

802.11a

250

Tx Prob.=1

200

Tx Prob.=0.8
Tx Prob.=0.6

150

Tx Prob.=0.4

100

Tx Prob.=0.2
Tx Prob.=0

50

90

Primary channel at the end

300

80

throughput gain

70

250

60

200

50

150

40
30

100

20

50

0
1

10
0

Number of 20 MHz STAs in the secondary channels

throughput gain (%)

400

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Transmission Probability

Fig. 5 Throughput comparison when the received signal power at the

secondary channel is below the secondary channel CCA threshold

better than the static bandwidth channel access scheme. For

example, when all three secondary channels of the 802.11ac
are heavily loaded (e.g. Tx Prob.=1) by the three 802.11a
STAs, the dynamic bandwidth channel access scheme
performs 569 % better than the static scheme as shown in
Table III. Even when the transmit probability is 0.6, which
could be considered as a medium traffic load, the dynamic
bandwidth channel access scheme performs 85 % better than
the static bandwidth channel access scheme. This is because
while the static scheme waits for all the secondary channels to
be idle for it to transmit 80 MHz PPDUs using the maximum
bandwidth, the dynamic scheme dynamically switches its
bandwidth down to 20 MHz or 40 MHz when the secondary
channels are busy, which guarantees at least the performance
of the 802.11ac operating in the 20 MHz mode.
C. Secondary Channel CCA Sensitivity
We have also simulated the case where the 802.11ac STA uses
the same secondary channel CCA sensitivity of 802.11n and
assume that the received power at each of the 20 MHz
channels of the 802.11ac STA is above the primary channel
CCA threshold (i.e. -82 dBm) but below the secondary
channel CCA threshold (i.e. -62 dBm). The simulation results
in Fig. 5 show that in this case the aggregate throughput of the
802.11n STAs drops close to 10 Mbps. This is because while
the 802.11a STAs in the secondary channels are able to detect
the 802.11ac STAs transmissions and defer their
transmissions when the 802.11ac STA is transmitting, the
802.11ac STA cannot detect the transmissions in the
secondary channels and will not defer its transmission and
may cause collisions. This makes the contention windows of
the 802.11a STAs grow rapidly to a very large number, which
degrades the throughput of the 802.11a STAs. Since the
802.11a STAs are deferring with very large backoff counter
values, the 802.11ac STA transmits most of the time.
D. Primary Channel in the Middle of the 80 MHz Channel
Fig. 6 compares the throughput of the 802.11ac STA for two
different positions of the primary channel as shown in Fig. 3.
Three 802.11a STAs are occupying the three secondary
channels. The results show that placing the primary channel
in the middle of the 80 MHz channel improves the throughput

Fig. 6 Throughput comparison between the primary channel in the middle

case and at the end case as shown in Fig. 3

by up to 20 % compared to the primary channel at the end of

the 80 MHz channel. This gain is achieved by one more 40
MHz transmission option shown in Fig. 3(b).
V. CONCLUSIONS
We investigated the dynamic 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth
channel access scheme for 802.11ac when there are legacy 20
MHz 802.11a/n stations operating in the secondary channels
of the 80 MHz channel. The results show that in order to
efficiently utilize the 80 MHz channel in a dense networking
environment, the dynamic bandwidth channel access scheme
is recommended for the 802.11ac stations. The study also
showed that the secondary channel CCA threshold should be
enhanced to mitigate collisions between the 802.11ac and the
802.11a/n stations in the secondary channels. The primary
channel should be also carefully chosen to achieve better
throughput.
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