Study of strategies for using multiple channels to serve real time traffic in IEEE 802.11be

We consider the service of Real Time Applications (RTA), such as virtual reality and augmented reality, industrial automation or remote control which is a significant challenge for the Wi-Fi technology in the emerging IEEE 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) standard amendment. One of the key innovations of Wi-Fi 7 is the support for simultaneous transmission and reception of data by a device in several frequency channels. This paper studies the use of this functionality in heterogeneous Wi-Fi 7 networks to guarantee low delays of RTA traffic and to provide as many channel resources as possible for delay insensitive traffic. Strategies with channel division by traffic type or by frame type are compared, as well as strategies without strict channel division but with setting prioritized channel access parameters and data duplication for transmission in several links. Depending on the traffic and network parameters, optimal strategies are determined in terms of the quality of service of RTA traffic and non-priority traffic.