Achievable rates optimization for broadcast channels using finite size constellations under transmission constraints

In this paper, maximal achievable rate regions are derived for power-constrained AWGN broadcast channel involving finite constellations and two users. The achievable rate region is studied for various transmission strategies including superposition coding and compared to standard schemes such as time sharing. The maximal achievable rates are obtained by optimizing over both the joint distribution of probability and over the constellation symbol positions. A numerical solution is proposed for solving this non-convex optimization problem. Then, we consider several variations of the same problem by introducing various constraints on the optimization variables. The aim is to evaluate efficiency vs. complexity tradeoffs of several transmission strategies, some of which (the simplest ones) can be found in actual standards. The improvement for each scheme is evaluated in terms of SNR savings for target achievable rates or/and percentage of gain in achievable rates for one user compared to a reference scheme. As an application, two scenarios of coverage areas and user alphabets are considered. This study allows to evaluate with practical criteria the performance improvement brought by more advanced schemes.