Techniques for increasing the reliability in IEEE 802.11

A first station (STA) comprising:

• a processor;
• a transmitter;
• and
• a receiver,
• the processor and the transmitter configured to:
• transmit, to a second STA, a plurality of request to send (RTS) frames over a plurality of channels;
• receive, from the second STA, a plurality of clear to send (CTS) frames, each CTS frame being received on a corresponding channel and indicating availability of that channel;
• determine, based on the received CTS frames, a number of available channels;
• determine one or more reliability requirements of a traffic flow associated with a frame;
• determine, based on the number of available channels, the one or more reliability requirements, and per-modulation-and-coding-scheme (MCS) error probabilities computed using a measured signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for the second STA, a configuration including a replication count of the frame, a channel bandwidth, and an MCS for the channel bandwidth, wherein the configuration satisfies the one or more reliability requirements, the MCS is selected to meet a minimum bandwidth requirement of the traffic flow, and the replication count is less than or equal to the number of available channels;
• transmit, based on the determined configuration, a number of identical copies of the frame equal to the replication count, without channel bonding, simultaneously, over a number of the available channels equal to the replication count, including a primary channel of a basic service set identifier (BSSID) of the first STA;
• and
• receive an acknowledgment for the frame on the primary channel.