{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T02:49:49Z","timestamp":1760237389367,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":46,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,14]],"date-time":"2020-05-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1589414400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["61671073"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61671073"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In order to meet the ever-increasing traffic demand of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), channel bonding is introduced in IEEE 802.11 standards. Although channel bonding effectively increases the transmission rate, the wider channel reduces the number of non-overlapping channels and is more susceptible to interference. Meanwhile, the traffic load differs from one access point (AP) to another and changes significantly depending on the time of day. Therefore, the primary channel and channel bonding bandwidth should be carefully selected to meet traffic demand and guarantee the performance gain. In this paper, we proposed an On-Demand Channel Bonding (O-DCB) algorithm based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for heterogeneous WLANs to reduce transmission delay, where the APs have different channel bonding capabilities. In this problem, the state space is continuous and the action space is discrete. However, the size of action space increases exponentially with the number of APs by using single-agent DRL, which severely affects the learning rate. To accelerate learning, Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) is used to train O-DCB. Real traffic traces collected from a campus WLAN are used to train and test O-DCB. Simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm has good convergence and lower delay than other algorithms.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20102789","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,14]],"date-time":"2020-05-14T10:27:19Z","timestamp":1589452039000},"page":"2789","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["On-Demand Channel Bonding in Heterogeneous WLANs: A Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2272-6710","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hang","family":"Qi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Key Laboratory of Network System Architecture and Convergence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Laboratory of Advanced Information Networks, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Hao","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Key Laboratory of Network System Architecture and Convergence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Laboratory of Advanced Information Networks, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhiqun","family":"Hu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computing and Information Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Xiangming","family":"Wen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Key Laboratory of Network System Architecture and Convergence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Laboratory of Advanced Information Networks, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhaoming","family":"Lu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Key Laboratory of Network System Architecture and Convergence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"},{"name":"Beijing Laboratory of Advanced Information Networks, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,14]]},"reference":[{"unstructured":"Gast, M. 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