Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Scheduling for Wi-Fi Multi-Access Point Coordination

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Nunez, David, Wilhelmi, Francesc, Wojnar, Maksymilian, Kosek-Szott, Katarzyna, Szott, Szymon, Bellalta, Boris
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Nunez, David
Wilhelmi, Francesc
Wojnar, Maksymilian
Kosek-Szott, Katarzyna
Szott, Szymon
Bellalta, Boris
author_facet Nunez, David
Wilhelmi, Francesc
Wojnar, Maksymilian
Kosek-Szott, Katarzyna
Szott, Szymon
Bellalta, Boris
contents Multi-access point coordination (MAPC) is a key feature of IEEE 802.11bn, with a potential impact on future Wi-Fi networks. MAPC enables joint scheduling decisions across multiple access points (APs) to improve throughput, latency, and reliability in dense Wi-Fi deployments. However, implementing efficient scheduling policies under diverse traffic and interference conditions in overlapping basic service sets (OBSSs) remains a complex task. This paper presents a method to minimize the network-wide worst-case latency by formulating MAPC scheduling as a sequential decision-making problem and proposing a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) mechanism to minimize worst-case delays in OBSS deployments. Specifically, we train a DRL agent using proximal policy optimization (PPO) within an 802.11bn-compatible Gymnasium environment. This environment provides observations of queue states, delay metrics, and channel conditions, enabling the agent to schedule multiple AP-station pairs to transmit simultaneously by leveraging spatial reuse (SR) groups. Simulations demonstrate that our proposed solution outperforms state-of-the-art heuristic strategies across a wide range of network loads and traffic patterns. The trained machine learning (ML) models consistently achieve lower 99th-percentile delays, showing up to a 30% improvement over the best baseline.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_19377
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Scheduling for Wi-Fi Multi-Access Point Coordination
Nunez, David
Wilhelmi, Francesc
Wojnar, Maksymilian
Kosek-Szott, Katarzyna
Szott, Szymon
Bellalta, Boris
Networking and Internet Architecture
Multi-access point coordination (MAPC) is a key feature of IEEE 802.11bn, with a potential impact on future Wi-Fi networks. MAPC enables joint scheduling decisions across multiple access points (APs) to improve throughput, latency, and reliability in dense Wi-Fi deployments. However, implementing efficient scheduling policies under diverse traffic and interference conditions in overlapping basic service sets (OBSSs) remains a complex task. This paper presents a method to minimize the network-wide worst-case latency by formulating MAPC scheduling as a sequential decision-making problem and proposing a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) mechanism to minimize worst-case delays in OBSS deployments. Specifically, we train a DRL agent using proximal policy optimization (PPO) within an 802.11bn-compatible Gymnasium environment. This environment provides observations of queue states, delay metrics, and channel conditions, enabling the agent to schedule multiple AP-station pairs to transmit simultaneously by leveraging spatial reuse (SR) groups. Simulations demonstrate that our proposed solution outperforms state-of-the-art heuristic strategies across a wide range of network loads and traffic patterns. The trained machine learning (ML) models consistently achieve lower 99th-percentile delays, showing up to a 30% improvement over the best baseline.
title Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Scheduling for Wi-Fi Multi-Access Point Coordination
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19377