Data rate and throughput enhancement base on IEEE802.11n standard employing multiple antenna elements

In this paper, the performance of wireless local area networks (WLANs) with Single-User MIMO (SU-MIMO) vs. Single-User Beamforming (SU-BFM) and Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) vs. Multi-User Beamforming (MU-BFM) schemes in terms of data rate and average throughput has been investigated. The MIMO technique is the use of multiple antennas at both transmitter and receiver to improve data rate performance while beamforming increases the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) resulting in large coverage area. The tradeoff between both schemes is the main focus for this paper. The obtained results show that MIMO and beamforming techniques are able to improve the average throughput. The SU-BFM and MU-BFM schemes provide higher data rate and throughput at long distance. On the other hand, SU-MIMO and MU-MIMO schemes give rise to data transmission rate and throughput at short distance.