Robust Rank-Two Multicast Beamforming under a Unified CSI Uncertainty Model

We study a beamformed Alamouti coding scheme for a multigroup multicast downlink system. In this letter, we take into account imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the base station, where the CSI uncertainty region is formed by the intersection of multiple ellipsoids. This unified CSI uncertainty model leads to a challenging robust rank-two multicast beamforming problem. We first develop a conservative approximation method to handle the intractable constraints in the formulated robust beamforming problem under the considered CSI uncertainty region. Then, we apply the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique to approximately solve this problem. Our rank-profile analysis shows that the SDR is tight when there are at most two users in each multicast group and the CSI uncertainty region is not too large. Finally, we carry out simulations to validate the effectiveness of the proposed conservative approximation method. The simulation results coincide with the rank-profile analysis.