Multiuser scheduling for MIMO wireless systems

Significant throughput gains can be leveraged in multiuser wireless systems by taking advantage of the spatial diversity provided by multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or receiver and the multiuser diversity inherent in the system. For delay tolerant data applications, this gain in system throughput can be realized through a scheduling scheme where the resources are allocated to the user experiencing the most favorable channel. In this paper, we investigate scheduling algorithms for the downlink of a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) multiuser wireless system. We propose a novel scheduling scheme that exploits spatial and multiuser diversities available in the channel. We provide numerical results demonstrating that by allowing more bits in the feedback channel, the proposed scheme enjoys significant performance gains over the existing schemes with comparable complexity. Furthermore, compared to schemes requiring perfect channel information at the base station, the proposed scheme has less complexity at the expense of a loss in throughput.