Characterizing the capacity gain of stream control scheduling in MIMO wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Stream control (SC) has recently attracted attentions in the research of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) wireless networks as a potential way to improve network capacity. However, inappropriate use of SC may significantly degrade network capacity as well. In this paper, we provide the first formal study on SC scheduling in MIMO wireless mesh networks (WMNs). We derive the theoretical upper bound on network capacity gain of SC scheduling. We also provide an efficient scheduling algorithm and show that its achieved network capacity gain is close to its theoretical upper bound. Moreover, we point out the poor performance of a previous SC scheduling algorithm SCMA under the general settings of WMNs. This formal characterization provides a deeper understanding of steam control scheduling in MIMO WMNs.