Massive MIMO Multicasting in Noncooperative Cellular Networks

We study physical layer multicasting in cellular networks where each base station (BS) is equipped with a very large number of antennas and transmits a common message using a single beamformer to multiple mobile users. The messages sent by different BSs are independent, and the BSs do not cooperate. We first show that when each BS knows the perfect channel state information (CSI) of its own served users, the asymptotically optimal beamformer at each BS is a linear combination of the channel vectors of its multicast users. Moreover, the optimal and explicit combining coefficients are obtained. Then we consider the imperfect CSI scenario where the CSI is obtained through uplink channel estimation in time-division duplex systems. We propose a new pilot scheme that estimates the composite channel, which is a linear combination of the individual channels of multicast users in each cell. This scheme is able to completely eliminate pilot contamination. The pilot power control for optimizing the multicast beamformer at each BS is also derived. Numerical results show that the asymptotic performance of the proposed scheme is close to the ideal case with perfect CSI. Simulation also verifies the effectiveness of the proposed scheme with finite number of antennas at each BS.