Fairness and Delay in MU-MIMO WLANs

In this paper, single-user (SU) and multi-user (MU) transmission approaches in multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) wireless local area networks (WLANs) are compared. The impact of the transmission strategy on both short-term and long-term fairness and frame delay distribution is studied. This work is focused on the previously presented single-user-distributed coordination function (SU-DCF) and multi-user -distributed coordination function (MU-DCF), both based on the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF). A comparative performance analysis is given, and despite the increased system complexity, it is argued in favor of MU systems.