Enhancing coverage and capacity for multiuser MIMO systems by utilizing scheduling

Recent studies have revealed that the remarkable capacity improvement resulting from an open-loop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing system may come at the sacrifice of degrading link reliability. This tradeoff between antenna multiplexing gain against antenna diversity gain may translate into smaller coverage areas. In this paper, we suggest using the multiuser diversity to replenish the diversity-deficient spatial multiplexing MIMO system. Specifically, we propose a fair scheduling scheme, called the strongest-weakest-normalized-subchannel-first (SWNSF) scheduling, which requires only limited amount of feedback. Our analysis and results indicate that the SWNSF scheduling can significantly increase the coverage of the multiuser MIMO system while further improving the system capacity.