Multigroup Multicast Beamforming and Antenna Selection with Rate-Splitting in Multicell Systems

Abstract

This paper studies energy-efficient joint coordinated beamforming and antenna selection in multi-cell multi-user multigroup multicast multiple-input single-output systems. We focus on interference-limited scenarios, e.g., when the number of radio frequency (RF) chains is of the same order as the number of multicasting groups. To tackle the interference, we exploit rate-splitting to divide the group messages into common and group-specific sub-messages. We propose a per-cell rate-splitting approach, where the common message is locally designed to be decoded by the in-cell users, while treated as noise by the out-cell users. We consider the case where the number of RF chains is smaller than that of antennas, and consider a switching architecture, that is, the antenna selection is employed to choose the best antennas for transmission. Numerical results illustrate the potential of the proposed approach to significantly improve the energy efficiency in the interference-limited regime.