This paper proposes a power saving control method for battery-powered portable wireless LAN (WLAN) access points (APs) in an overlapping basic service set (OBSS) environment. The IEEE802.11 standard does not support power saving control for APs. Some conventional power saving control methods for APs have been proposed that use the network allocation vector (NAV) to inhibit transmission at stations (STAs) while the AP is sleeping. However, since with these approaches the actual beacon interval in the OBSS environment may be extended due to the NAV as compared to the beacon interval which is set at the AP, the power consumption and delay may be increased as compared to a single BSS unaffected by interference from neighboring APs. To overcome this problem, this paper introduces a new action frame named power saving access point (PSAP) action frame which the AP uses to inform STAs within its BSS about the AP's sleep length. In addition, a function of the PSAP action frame is that STAs enter the sleep state after receiving the PSAP action frame. The proposed control method avoids the postponement of beacon transmission and reduces the power consumption in an OBSS environment, as compared to the conventional control method. Numerical analysis and computer simulation reveal that the newly proposed control method conserves power as compared to the conventional control method. The proposed control method achieves the minimum consumed power ratio at the AP, which is 44% as compared to the standard, when the beacon interval is 100 ms and the sleep length is 60 ms, even if the number of neighboring APs in an OBSS environment is increased.

Multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) improves the system channel capacity by generating a large virtual MIMO channel between a base station and multiple user terminals (UTs) with effective utilization of wireless resources. Block beamforming algorithms such as Block Diagonalization (BD) and Block Maximum Signal-to-Noise ratio (BMSN) have been proposed in order to realize MU-MIMO broadcast transmission. The BD algorithm cancels inter-user interference (IUI) by creating the weights so that the channel matrices for the other users are set to be zero matrices. The BMSN algorithm has a function of maintaining a high gain response for each desired user in addition to IUI cancellation. Therefore, the BMSN algorithm generally outperforms the BD algorithm. However, when the number of transmit antennas is equal to the total number of receive antennas, the transmission rate by both BD and BMSN algorithms is decreased. This is because the eigenvalues of channel matrices are too small to support data transmission. To resolve the issue, this paper focuses on an antenna selection (AS) method at the UTs. The AS method reduces the number of pattern nulls for the other users except an intended user in the BD and BMSN algorithms. It is verified via bit error rate (BER) evaluation that the AS method is effective in the BD and BMSN algorithms, especially, when the number of user antennas with a low bit rate (i.e., low signal-to-noise power ratio) is increased. Moreover, this paper evaluates the achievable bit rate and throughput including an actual channel state information feedback based on IEEE802.11ac standard. Although the number of equivalent receive antenna is reduced to only one by the AS method when the number of antennas at the UT is two, it is shown that the throughputs by BD and BMSN with the AS method (BD-AS and BMSN-AS) are higher than those by the conventional BD and BMSN algorithms.

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is attracting interest for increasing the transmission rates of wireless systems. This paper surveys MIMO transmission technology from the viewpoints of transmission methods, access control schemes, and total transmission efficiency. We consider wireless local area networks (WLAN) systems that use MIMO technology; moreover, we focus on multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) technology, which will be introduced in next-generation WLAN systems such as IEEE802.11ac. This paper explains the differences in the detailed access control procedures for MIMO and MU-MIMO transmission, including channel state information (CSI) acquisition. Furthermore, the issues related to CSI feedback and solutions are also discussed. Related works on the medium access control (MAC) protocol in MIMO/MU-MIMO transmission are introduced. In addition, the throughput performance using MIMO/MU-MIMO transmission is evaluated considering an IEEE802.11ac-based WLAN system. From the numerical evaluation, it is shown that the overhead due to CSI feedback from the user terminals to the base station causes a decrease in the throughput. We verified that implicit beamforming, which eliminates CSI feedback, is effective for solving this issue.

This paper proposes Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) based orthogonal beam selection method at the user terminals (UTs) to reduce the number of nulls for the other users except an intended user by the Block Diagonalization (BD) algorithm in multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) sytems. The BD algorithm has been proposed in order to realize MU-MIMO broadcast transmission with a realistic signal processing burden. The BD algorithm cancels inter-user interference by creating the weights so that the channel matrixes for the other users are set to be zero matrixes. However, when the number of transmit antennas is equals to the total number of received antennas, the transmission rate by the BD algorithm is decreased. The proposed method realizes the performance improvement compared to the conventional BD algorithm without the burden on the UTs. It is verified via bit error rate (BER) evaluation that the proposed method is effective compared to the conventional BD algorithm and antenna selection method. Moreover, the effectiveness of proposed method is verified by the performance evaluation considering medium access control (MAC) layer in a comparison with the conventional BD algorithm which needs the channel state information (CSI) feedback. Because the proposed method can be easily applied to beamforming without the CSI feedback (implicit beamforming), it is shown that the propose method is effective from a point of view on the transmission efficiency in MU-MIMO system.

Data aggregation, which is the process of summarizing a large amount of data, is an effective method for saving limited communication resources, such as radio frequency and sensor-node energy. Packet aggregation in wireless LAN and sensed-data aggregation in wireless sensor networks are typical examples. We propose and analyze two queueing models of fundamental statistical data aggregation schemes: constant interval and constant aggregation number. We represent each aggregation scheme by a tandem queueing network model with a gate at the aggregation process and a single server queue at a transmission process. We analytically derive the stationary distribution and Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the system time for each aggregation and transmission process and of the total system time. We then numerically evaluate the stationary mean system time characteristics and clarify that each model has an optimal aggregation parameter (i.e., an optimal aggregation interval or optimal aggregation number), that minimizes the mean total system time. In addition, we derive the explicit optimal aggregation parameter for a D/M/1 transmission model with each aggregation scheme and clarify that it provides accurate approximation of that of each aggregation model. The optimal aggregation interval was determined by the transmission rate alone, while the optimal aggregation number was determined by the arrival and transmission rates alone with explicitly derived proportional constants. These results can provide a theoretical basis and a guideline for designing aggregation devices, such as IoT gateways.