On the capacity and BER performance of multiuser scheduling over MIMO Nakagami-m fading channels

This paper presents a performance analysis for evaluating multiuser and spatial diversities achieved in multiuser MIMO systems employing orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) over Nakagami-m fading channels. Two multiuser scheduling schemes are considered, absolute SNR-based scheduling (AS) and normalized SNR-based scheduling (NS) schemes for both heterogeneous and homogeneous wireless networks. Analytical expressions are derived for the average channel capacity and average bit error rate (BER) of these systems. The considered scheduling schemes are numerically evaluated and compared in terms of average capacity, average BER and fairness. It is shown that in the heterogeneous case, unlike the AS scheme, the NS scheme can guarantee fairness to the users. It is also shown that in the heterogeneous case, the AS scheme yields a higher average capacity and a lower average BER compared to the NS scheme and to the homogeneous case. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.