Concurrent Channel Access and Estimation for Scalable Multiuser MIMO Networking

Abstract

This paper presents the design of MIMO/CON (“MIMO with concurrent channel access and estimation”), a PHY/MAC cross-layer design delivering throughput scalable to many users for multiuser MIMO wireless networking. By allowing concurrent launches of multiple data transmissions from multiple users, MIMO/CON can fully realize the capacity gain of a multi-antenna MIMO system. Using compressive sensing, MIMO/CON simultaneously estimates channel state information (CSI) of multiple channels from concurrently received preambles. Furthermore, MIMO/CON can boost channel utilization by allowing concurrent transmissions to exceed receive antennas momentarily. MIMO/CON has been implemented and evaluated on a lab testbed with software-defined radios. Further, simulation results suggest that MIMO/CON can achieve an improvement by up to 210% in MAC throughput over existing staggered access protocols in a 5×5 MIMO scenario.