Transmit beamforming for physical-layer multicasting

This paper considers the problem of downlink transmit beamforming for wireless transmission and downstream precoding for digital subscriber wireline transmission, in the context of common information broadcasting or multicasting applications wherein channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitter. Unlike the usual "blind" isotropic broadcasting scenario, the availability of CSI allows transmit optimization. A minimum transmission power criterion is adopted, subject to prescribed minimum received signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) at each of the intended receivers. A related max-min SNR "fair" problem formulation is also considered subject to a transmitted power constraint. It is proven that both…