Packet Duplication for Improving Throughput of the Multi-Link Devices in Wi-Fi 7 Networks

Abstract—Multi-link operation (MLO) is one of the main innovations of the upcoming IEEE 802.11be standard. MLO uses a common sliding window for all links to control the delivery of packets. Due to the finiteness of the sliding window, transmission of packets on one link may result in packet shortages on other links, reducing throughput. To avoid it, an aggregation algorithm is required that selects the number and packets to be transmitted. In this paper, the known algorithms are extended by sending duplicates. Simulations have confirmed that duplicates can increase the Multi-Link Device (MLD) throughput by accelerating the sliding window progression.