TRICS: A distributed MAC layer scheduling algorithm for concurrent transmissions in MIMO wireless mesh networks

In recent years smart antennas are acknowledged as a prominent PHY layer technology, which can be used for spatial multiplexing, transmit/receive diversity, adaptive beamforming and interference cancellation. In this paper spatial multiplexing and reuse (due to interference cancellation) features of smart antennas are considered to improve the throughput of wireless mesh networks with MIMO. We present a novel distributed link scheduling scheme, transmitter-receiver interference cancellation scheduling (TRICS). It enables nodes to transmit or receive data frames concurrently if one of the nearby transmitters or receivers is engaged in communication. TRICS is simple to apply, induces minimum delay and requires no overhead. Simulation results show that TRICS outperforms the traditional CSMA/CA scheme (exploiting spatial multiplexing) in wireless mesh networks.