Multi-path Routing and Stream Scheduling with Spatial Multiplexing and Interference Cancellation in MIMO Networks

In MIMO networks, there are two transmission strategies, SM (spatial multiplexing) and IC (interference cancellation). The use of SM and IC brings additional complexity for routing and transmission scheduling of the links. Almost all existing works on throughput optimization for MIMO systems are based on the assumption that traffic routing is given and they focus only on stream scheduling, where the performance of the system is limited. In this work, we study the joint optimization problem of routing and stream scheduling for MIMO networks, where the traffic is allowed to be routed through multiple paths to take benefit from concurrent transmissions. The problem is first formulated as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem, and solved optimally by using the column generation approach. An efficient online heuristic algorithm for multi-path routing and stream scheduling with dynamic traffic load is then proposed based on the column generation approach. Extensive simulation results have been conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.