Linear transceiver design for a MIMO interfering broadcast channel achieving max-min fairness

We consider the problem of linear transceiver design to achieve max-min fairness in a downlink MIMO multicell network. This problem can be formulated as maximizing the minimum rate among all the users in an interfering broadcast channel (IBC). In this paper we show that when the number of antennas is at least two at each of the transmitters and the receivers, the min rate maximization problem is NP-hard in the number of users. Moreover, we develop a low-complexity algorithm for this problem by iteratively solving a sequence of convex subproblems. We theoretically establish the global convergence of the proposed algorithm to the set of stationary points, which may be suboptimal due to the non-convexity of the original minimum rate maximization problem. Numerical simulations show that this algorithm is efficient in achieving fairness among all the users. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.