Characterizing the Capacity Gain of Stream Control Scheduling in MIMO Wireless Mesh Networks

Stream control has recently attracted attentions in the research of MIMO wireless networks as a potential way to improve network capacity. However, inappropriate use of stream control may significantly degrade network capacity as well. In this paper, we provide the first formal study on stream control scheduling in MIMO wireless mesh networks. We derive the theoretical upper bound on network capacity gain of stream control 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 stream control scheduling algorithm SCMA under the general settings of wireless mesh networks. This formal characterization provides a deeper understanding of steam control scheduling in MIMO wireless mesh networks.