Outage probability-based beamforming design for multi-cell multicast networks

In this paper, we address the problem of minimizing channel outage probability for multi-cell multicast networks. Our main objective is to guarantee fairness and to design efficient transmit beamforming vector for physical layer multicasting. The challenging NP-hard problem is tackled by leveraging the principle of sequential parametric convex approximation. More specifically, the original non-convex problem is replaced by a sequence of successively refined approximated problems. We derive the closed-form solution for each approximated problem. In addition to that, we design a centralized algorithm and demonstrate that it can be implemented in a distributed fashion. The proposed algorithm is guaranteed to converge to a stationary solution of the original problem. Numerical results are then provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical findings.