Allocation and adaptation techniques for protocol performance improvement in multicellular wireless packet networks with MIMO links

With the aim of optimizing the performance of a data protocol, we investigate the effects and the role played by distributed resource allocation and rate/power adaptation in a wireless SDMA/TDMA network where multiple antenna elements are used at both transmitter and receiver side, and perfect channel state information (CSI) is available at the receiver only. We consider the uplink of a multiple cell system, throughput-driven allocation and adaptation algorithms, and address the issues related to the management of intercell interference. We find that the capacity of the network is heavily affected by the presence of interference and it is important to exploit a part of the receiving antennas to mitigate strong interference and to have an estimation of the interference covariance matrix to tune allocation and adaptation algorithms. The results show that the joint use of distributed best-fit allocation algorithms with adaptive antenna selection allow substantial improvement with respect to the basic case of random access. Moreover, simple stream control strategies prevent capacity degradation when the offered load exceeds the maximum capacity.