López Raventós, ÁlvaroBellalta, Boris2023-02-012023-02-012022López-Raventós A, Bellalta B. Dynamic traffic allocation in IEEE 802.11be multi-Link WLANs. IEEE Wirel Commun Lett. 2022;11(7):1404-8. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2022.31714422162-2337http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55589The multi-link operation (MLO) is a key feature of the next IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput amendment. Through its adoption, it is expected to enhance users’ experience by improving throughput rates and latency. However, potential MLO gains are tied to how traffic is distributed across the multiple radio interfaces. In this letter, we introduce a traffic manager atop MLO, and evaluate different high-level traffic-to-link allocation policies to distribute incoming traffic over the set of enabled interfaces. Following a flow-level approach, we compare both non-dynamic and dynamic traffic balancing policy types. The results show that the use of a dynamic policy, along with MLO, allows to significantly reduce the congestion suffered by traffic flows, enhancing the traffic delivery in all the evaluated scenarios, and in particular improving the quality of service received by video flows. Moreover, we show that the adoption of MLO in future Wi-Fi networks improves also the coexistence with non-MLO networks, which results in performance gains for both MLO and non-MLO networks.application/pdfeng© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LWC.2022.3171442info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LWC.2022.3171442IEEE 802.11beMulti-link operationTraffic managementDynamic allocationWLANsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess