A static/opportunistic hybrid-scheduling scheme for MIMO wireless networks

Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) based Spatial Time Division Multiple Access (STDMA) Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have attracted extensive research attention. However, there are two problems in existing studies: (1) the employed MIMO link rate models are not suitable for a MIMO link of a practical STDMA WMN, and (2) the designed scheduling algorithms usually cannot take advantage of the multi-user diversity in a WMN. In this paper, we develop an analytical model for determining the MIMO link rate of an STDMA WMN. Based on a node-based slot assignment and scheduling algorithm (Chen and Lea in IEEE Trans Veh Technol 62(1):272–283, 2013), we propose a static/opportunistic hybrid scheduling framework that can exploit multi-user diversity and channel fading. The performance evaluation shows that the proposed framework has 33–46 % throughput gain over the prior joint routing and time slot assignment schemes for MIMO WMNs.