An Efficient Channel Feedback and Transmission Scheme for Large-Scale MIMO Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless ad hoc networks have been seen as the basis for large-scale unmanned clusters and emergency communications. Besides, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technologies can significantly enhance the transmission performance of ad hoc networks. In order to take advantage of the benefits of MIMO systems in ad hoc networks, channel estimation and channel state information (CSI) feedback are required at each node, which will incur a heavy resource overhead when the network scale is large. To address these challenges, we propose an efficient transmission scheme specifically designed for MIMO ad hoc networks, in which the channel estimation and feedback are considered jointly. In addition, the theoretical analysis is provided to obtain the optimal channel estimation range and feedback accuracy regarding the multi-hop data transmission performance. Simulation results show that the average transmission delay is significantly improved by the proposed scheme compared with the traditional approach.