Rate allocation on Broadcast Channels with analog Joint Source Channel Coding

We address the design of suitable access methods for the analog Joint Source Channel Coding (JSCC) transmission of discrete-time analog symbols over Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) Broadcast Channels (BCs). Access methods are designed to minimize the transmit power while fulfilling a given set of distortion constraints. Two different access methods are considered depending on the specific requirements for the user transmissions: linear Mean Square Error (MSE) and opportunistic access. The flexibility of the linear MSE access allows to either fix the rate at which the information should be transmitted to the BC users or use the optimum rates at each channel realization. The results obtained show that the proposed BC access strategies provide near optimal performance for different scenarios.