Max–Min Fair Transmit Precoding for Multi-Group Multicasting in Massive MIMO

This paper considers the downlink precoding for physical layer multicasting in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We study the max-min fairness (MMF) problem, where channel state information at the transmitter is used to design precoding vectors that maximize the minimum spectral efficiency (SE) of the system, given fixed power budgets for uplink training and downlink transmission. Our system model accounts for channel estimation, pilot contamination, arbitrary path-losses, and multi-group multicasting. We consider six scenarios with different transmission technologies (unicast and multicast), different pilot assignment strategies (dedicated or shared pilot assignments), and different precoding schemes (maximum ratio transmission and zero forcing), and derive achievable spectral efficiencies for all possible combinations. Then, we solve the MMF problem for each of these scenarios, and for any given pilot length, we find the SE maximizing uplink pilot and downlink data transmission policies, all in closed forms. We use these results to draw a general guideline for massive MIMO multicasting design, where for a given number of base station antennas, number of users, and coherence interval length, we determine the multicasting scheme that shall be used.