NS3-PP simulation platform

Modern Wi-Fi networks increasingly rely on wide channels to achieve high throughput. However, in dense deployments, wide-channel operation is often disrupted by narrowband transmissions from neighboring or legacy devices. IEEE 802.11ax and IEEE 802.11be address this issue with preamble puncturing, a mechanism that allows a transmitter to omit busy 20 MHz subchannels and effectively use the remaining idle spectrum.

Despite the importance of preamble puncturing for Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 networks, studying its behavior in realistic overlapping network scenarios requires a flexible simulation framework. In particular, such a framework should make it possible to evaluate different puncturing algorithms, mixed-bandwidth deployments, narrowband traffic patterns, and long-term fairness effects.

To address this need, WNL has developed NS3-PP, an NS-3-based simulation platform for studying preamble puncturing in IEEE 802.11 networks.

NS3-PP was developed during our work on SmartPuncture, a new preamble puncturing algorithm designed to prevent fairness issues in overlapping basic service sets. The platform extends NS-3 with the functionality required to model 20 MHz subchannel-based spectrum usage, standard-compliant puncturing schemes, channel bonding behavior, and overlapping Wi-Fi networks with different maximum channel widths.

NS3-PP can be used to evaluate the performance of preamble puncturing algorithms in a variety of dense Wi-Fi deployments. It supports the analysis of throughput, fairness, delay, goodput, and instantaneous throughput under different traffic loads and network configurations.

Using NS3-PP, we have shown that existing preamble puncturing strategies may lead to bandwidth starvation, where one network is forced to operate with an unnecessarily small bandwidth for an extended period. We have also demonstrated that SmartPuncture mitigates this effect using only local observations, without inter-BSS coordination. In the evaluated scenarios, SmartPuncture improves the geometric mean throughput by up to 60%, reaches Jain’s fairness index close to 1.0, and improves the performance of narrowband stations by reducing delay and increasing throughput.

To get more information about NS3-PP and SmartPuncture, please read the paper below.

A. Tretiakov, I. Levitsky, V. Loginov and E. Khorov, “SmartPuncture: Optimizing Subchannel Puncturing in 802.11 Networks,” IEEE Access, 2026.

Please cite this paper if you use NS3-PP. To get NS3-PP, please fill in the form below.