AbstractThe throughput analyses for MIMO‐TDMA (multiple‐input multiple‐output with time division multiple access) and MIMO‐CDMA (multiple‐input multiple‐output with code division multiple access) are performed. These analyses show that there is a crossover in the throughput for MIMO‐TDMA and MIMO‐CDMA. Also, they show that the signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and the number of co‐channel users under multiple access control can determine that either MIMO‐TDMA or MIMO‐CDMA has the advantage in the throughput. We solve one equation that equalizes the upper bounds of throughput and use its solution as the threshold of SNR for the threshold‐based switching algorithm, which switches to MIMO‐TDMA if the received SNR is larger than the threshold of SNR and switches to MIMO‐CDMA otherwise. Simulation results show that the threshold of SNR approximates the crossover SNR (for which MIMO‐TDMA and MIMO‐CDMA have the same throughput) so that the threshold‐based switching scheme (which adopts the threshold based switching algorithm) can switch to the scheme (MIMO‐TDMA or MIMO‐CDMA) that has the largest throughput. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.