Evaluating UORA-Based Polling Mechanism for Latency-Sensitive Uplink Traffic in Wi-Fi Networks

IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) introduced Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), which enables simultaneous transmissions through centralized resource allocation. However, effective uplink scheduling requires the Access Point (AP) to identify which stations (STAs) have data to transmit. This typically necessitates polling for buffer status reports, a process that becomes increasingly inefficient and unscalable with growing device density. In this paper, we study how the Uplink OFDMA-based Random Access (UORA) feature improves the scalability and delay experienced by latency-sensitive data streams. We show that UORA enables efficient uplink scheduling while opportunistically identifying buffered traffic from unscheduled STAs, striking a balance between coordination and scalability. Performance evaluation of different polling strategies is done by means of simulation in ns-3. The results indicate that UORA-based polling outperforms alternative schemes in densely deployed network environments with heterogeneous uplink traffic patterns. Furthermore, under highly sparse and sporadic traffic conditions, UORA-based polling yields over 40% delay reduction compared to Scheduled Access (SA) OFDMA.