Throughput Behavior in Multihop Multiantenna Wireless Networks

Multiantenna or MIMO systems offer great potential for increasing the throughput of multihop wireless networks via spatial reuse and/or spatial multiplexing. This paper characterizes and analyzes the maximum achievable throughput in multihop, MIMO-equipped, wireless networks under three MIMO protocols, spatial reuse only (SRP), spatial multiplexing only (SMP), and spatial reuse and multiplexing (SRMP), each of which enhances the throughput, but via a different way of exploiting MIMO's capabilities. We show via extensive simulation that as the number of antennas increases, the maximum achievable throughput first rises and then flattens out asymptotically under SRP, while it increases "almost" linearly under SMP or SRMP. We also evaluate the effects of several network parameters on this achievable throughput, and show how throughput behaves under these effects.