  The Spatial Reuse (SR) operation included in the IEEE 802.11ax-2020 (11ax)
amendment aims at increasing the number of parallel transmissions in an
Overlapping Basic Service Set (OBSS). However, many unknowns exist about the
performance gains that can be achieved through SR. In this paper, we provide a
brief introduction to the SR operation described in the IEEE 802.11ax (draft
D4.0). Then, a simulation-based implementation is provided in order to explore
the performance gains of the SR operation. Our results show the potential of
using SR in different scenarios covering multiple network densities and traffic
loads. In particular, we observe significant improvements on the channel
utilization when applying SR with respect to the default configuration, thus
allowing to increase the throughput and reduce the delay. Interestingly, the
highest improvements provided by the SR operation are observed in the most
pessimistic situations in terms of network density and traffic load.
