  The WiFi landscape is rapidly changing over the last years, responding to the
new needs of wireless communications. IEEE 802.11ax is the next
fast-approaching standard, addressing some of today's biggest performance
challenges specifically for high-density public environments. It is designed to
operate at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, the latter being rapidly adopted worldwide
after its inclusion in IEEE 802.11ac, and with expected growing demand in the
next 10 years.
  This paper assesses empirically the suitability of the available IEEE
802.11ax path loss models at 5 GHz on some real testbeds and proposes a new
model with higher abstraction level; i.e., without requiring from a previous in
situ analysis of each considered receiver's location. The proposed TMB path
loss model, used in combination with generated data sets, is able to obtain an
estimation of RSSI, selected modulation and coding scheme (MCS), and number of
spatial streams in function of the AP configuration and the AP-STA distance. We
aim to use the model to compare IEEE 802.11ac/ax performance simulation results
with experimental ones.
