An efficient uplink multiuser MIMO protocol in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

This paper proposes an uplink Multi-User (MU) Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) protocol in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. In order to realize the uplink MU-MIMO transmission in 802.11 WLANs, there are several problems to be solved. Synchronized transmission among the stations (STAs) is one of the problems and the spatial compatibility between the transmitting STAs is another problem. Therefore, it is considered that many overheads are needed to realize the uplink MU-MIMO transmission. In the proposed protocol, after an access point (AP) informs the start of the uplink access phase by transmitting the indication frame, the STAs having data to be sent to the AP transmit the uplink access requests in the OFDMA manner. The AP recognizes the uplink access requests by detecting the subcarrier signals and it requests the detected STAs to transmit the pilot signals in the TDMA manner. The AP calculates the channel state information (CSI) between each STA from the received pilot signal and selects the STAs to be permitted to transmit the uplink frames based on the CSIs. The AP notifies the information about the permitted STAs and about the capable transmission rate, and then the permitted STAs simultaneously transmit the frames at the notified transmission rate. In the protocol, an efficient OFDMA-based uplink access request transmission scheme is also proposed. Thus, by adopting the proposed protocol, the overheads can be reduced and the network throughput can be enhanced. Computer simulations are performed and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.