Capacity Scaling of SDMA in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract: We consider an ad hoc network in which each multi-antenna transmitter sends independent streams to multiple receivers in a Poisson field of interferers. We provide the outage probability and transmission capacity scaling laws, aiming at investigating the fundamental limits of Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA). We first show that super linear capacity scaling with the number of receive/transmit antennas can be achieved using dirty paper coding. Nevertheless, the potential benefits of multi-stream, multi-antenna communications fall off quickly if linear precoding is employed, leading to sublinear capacity growth in the case of single-antenna receivers. A key finding is that receive antenna array processing is of vital importance in SDMA ad hoc networks, as a means to cancel the increased residual interference and boost the signal power through diversity.