Degrees of Freedom of the Two-User MIMO Broadcast Channel With Private and Common Messages Under Hybrid CSIT Models

We establish the degree of freedom (DoF) regions of the two-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel with a general message set (BC-GM), that includes private and common messages, under fast fading. Nine different channel state knowledge assumptions-collectively known as hybrid channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) models-are considered wherein the transmitter has either perfect/instantaneous, delayed, or no CSI from each of the two receivers. General antenna configurations are addressed wherein the three terminals have arbitrary numbers of antennas. The DoF regions are established for the five hybrid CSIT models in which either both channels are unknown at the transmitter or each of the two channels is known perfectly or with delay. In the four remaining cases in which exactly one of the two channels is unknown at the transmitter, the DoF regions under the restriction of linear encoding strategies-also known as the linear DoF (LDoF) regions-are established. As the key to the converse proofs of the LDoF region of the MIMO BC-GM under such hybrid CSIT assumptions, we show that, when only considering linear encoding strategies, the CSI from the receiver with more antennas does not help if there is no CSI available from the receiver with fewer antennas. This result is conjectured to be true even without the restriction on the encoding strategies to be linear. If true, the LDoF regions obtained for the four hybrid CSIT cases herein will also be the DoF regions for those cases. Many of the results of this paper when specialized to even the two-message problems are new. These include the LDoF regions, when one of the two channels is not known, of the MIMO BC-GM when specialized to the MIMO BC with private messages. They also include the DoF/LDoF regions for all the hybrid CSIT models obtained by specializing the corresponding regions for the MIMO BC-GM to the case with degraded messages.