Weighted max-min fair beamforming, power control, and scheduling for a MISO downlink

In this paper, we consider the joint beamforming, power control and scheduling problem in a multiple-input single- output (MISO) downlink for maximizing the minimum weighted rate among all users. We solve this problem by formulating it as a convex optimization problem whose function evaluations require maximization of a difference of convex functions (D.C. Programming). We also propose a simpler heuristic that finds the best policy under restricted set of power vectors. We then compare the performance of these policies against the dirty paper coding (DPC) policy to quantify the performance gap between an optimal point-to-point coding approach and an optimal joint encoding/decoding approach.