Efficient Transmission Mode Selection Scheme for MIMO-based WLANs

• Anup Thapa,
• Kyung Sup Kwak,
• Seokjoo Shin,

Vol. 8, No. 7, July 28, 2014
10.3837/tiis.2014.07.009, Download Paper (Free):

• IEEE 802.11ac
• IEEE 802.11n
• MU-MIMO
• SU-MIMO

Abstract

While single-user spatial multiplexing multiple-input multiple-output (SU-MIMO) allows spatially multiplexed data streams to be transmitted to one node at a time, multi-user spatial multiplexing MIMO (MU-MIMO) enables the simultaneous transmission to multiple nodes. However, if the transmission time required to send packets to each node varies considerably, MU-MIMO may fail to utilize the available MIMO capacity to its full potential. The transmission time typically depends upon two factors: the link quality of the selected channel and the data length (packet size). To utilize the cumulative capacity of multiple channels in MIMO applications, the assignment of channels to each node should be controlled according to the measured channel quality or the transmission queue status of the node. A MAC protocol design that can switch between MU-MIMO and multiple SU-MIMO transmissions by considering the channel quality and queue status information prior to the actual data transmission (i.e., by exchanging control packets between transmitter and receiver pairs) could address such issues in a simple but in attractive way. In this study, we propose a new MAC protocol that is capable of performing such switching and thereby improve the system performance of very high throughput WLANs. The detailed performance analysis demonstrates that greater benefits can be obtained using the proposed scheme, as compared to conventional MU-MIMO transmission schemes.

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