High-Efficient Frame Aggregation with Frame Size Adaptation for Downlink MU-MIMO Wireless LANs

Yoshihide NOMURA  Kazuo MORI  Hideo KOBAYASHI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E99-B    No.7    pp.1584-1592
Publication Date: 2016/07/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.2015EBP3474
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Wireless Communication Technologies
Keyword: 
WLANs,  IEEE 802.11,  MU-MIMO,  frame aggregation,  user scheduling,  frame size adaptation,  transmission error,  

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Summary: 
This paper investigates a frame aggregation (FA) technique in the medium access control (MAC) layer for downlink multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) channels in wireless local area networks (WLANs), and proposes a high-efficient FA scheme that ehances system performance: transmission performance and fairness in communication between mobile terminals (MTs). The proposed FA scheme employs novel criteria for selecting receiving MTs and wireless frame setting with a frame size adaptation mechanism for MU-MIMO transmissions. The proposed receiving MT selection gives higher priority to the MTs expecting higher throughput in the next MU-MIMO transmission and having large amount transmission data while reducing signaling overhead, leading to improvements in system throughput and fairness in communication. The proposed wireless frame setting, which employs hybrid A-MSDU/A-MPDU FA, achieves frame error rate (FER) better than the requirement from communication services by using A-MSDU frame size adaptation. Through system-level simulation, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated for downlink MU-MIMO channels in WLANs.