Rate and Power Allocation for Layered Transmission With Superposition Coding

We consider layered transmission of a Gaussian source over a quasi-static fading channel. A broadcast strategy is used in which multiple layers of source data are superimposed, and each layer is allocated a different power and transmission rate. For a multiple-antenna system where either the transmitter or the receiver has a single antenna, we propose a low-complexity algorithm for minimizing the expected end-to-end distortion of the received signal. Numerical results for a Rayleigh fading channel are presented, and the performance gain over a time-sharing strategy is quantified. It is numerically shown that for a wide range of operating conditions, equal rate allocation is as good as unequal rate allocation.