Medium access control protocol to address hidden terminals in MU-MIMO WLANs

Sanjeeb Shrestha, Gengfa Fang, Eryk Dutkiewicz, Xiaojing Huang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference proceeding contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We exploit the Degrees of Freedom (DoF) resulting from the deployment of multiple antennas, both at the Access Points (APs) and the clients, to address the Hidden Terminal problem in Multi User (MU) Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). This approach permits concurrent transmissions and is able to maintain a constant gain in network throughput in a Hidden Terminal scenario. We treat concurrent transmissions as an integral part of our design, so we adopt and extend the traditional Point Coordination Function (PCF) to manage them. Specifically, contention free period of the traditional PCF is used in uplink and downlink. In addition, based on DoF at APs, our MAC decides the Transmission Opportunity (TXOP) of APs/Transmitters in contrast to many traditional approaches. Besides, our MAC runs a concurrent algorithm at APs which forms an important part for the calculation of precoding vectors (based on the Zeroforcing) in the Physical Layer (PHY). Additionally, a seamless channel sounding process is designed to support the ZF precoding at the PHY which has 98.67μs signaling overhead, lower than IEEE802.11ac. Simulation studies in a typical 6-antenna AP and client scenario show that our MAC provides a remarkable constant network throughput gain of 4-5 times in comparison to traditional RTS/CTS, and a lower signaling overhead than IEEE802.11ac. Besides, our simple fairness algorithm provides a fair share in the throughput among APs, with the Jain Fairness Index greater than 90%.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 15th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, CIT 2015, 14th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications, IUCC 2015, 13th IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, DASC 2015 and 13th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, PICom 2015
EditorsYulei Wu, Geyong Min, Nektarios Georgalas, Jia Hu, Luigi Atzori, Xiaolong Jin, Stephen Jarvis, Lei Liu, Ramón Agüero Calvo
Place of PublicationPiscataway, NJ
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Pages1638-1645
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781509001545, 9781509001538
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Dec 2015
Event15th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, CIT 2015, 14th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications, IUCC 2015, 13th IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, DASC 2015 and 13th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, PICom 2015 - Liverpool, United Kingdom
Duration: 26 Oct 201528 Oct 2015

Other

Other15th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, CIT 2015, 14th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications, IUCC 2015, 13th IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, DASC 2015 and 13th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, PICom 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLiverpool
Period26/10/1528/10/15

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