Hypergraph Modeling and Approximation Algorithms for the Minimum Length Link Scheduling in Multiuser MIMO Networks

This paper investigates the problem of the minimum length link scheduling (MLLS) in multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) networks. Generally, in the networks with MU-MIMO capability, the number of concurrent transmissions can be as large as that of antenna elements at the receiver. As a result, link interference is no longer binary but demonstrates a strong correlation among multiple links, which cannot be captured by the conventional conflict graph interference model. Hence, we propose a novel hypergraph interference model, which can accurately and efficiently characterize the relationship of multiple interferences induced by concurrent transmissions, and provide a tractable formalization of the minimum length link scheduling in MU-MIMO networks (MU-MIMO MLLS). Afterwards, we prove that the MU-MIMO MLLS problem is NP-hard and introduce two approximation algorithms to find the near-optimal feasible schedule. Finally, extensive simulation experiments are presented.