A Practical Max-Min Fair Resource Allocation Algorithm for Rate-Splitting Multiple Access

Abstract: This letter introduces a novel resource allocation algorithm for achieving max-min fairness (MMF) in a rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) empowered multi-antenna broadcast channel. Specifically, we derive the closed-form solution for the optimal allocation of the common rate among users and the power between the common and private streams for a given practical low-complexity beamforming direction design. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves 90% of the MMF rate on average obtained by the conventional iterative optimization algorithm while only takes an average of 0.1 millisecond computational time, which is three orders of magnitude lower than the conventional algorithm. It is therefore a practical resource allocation algorithm for RSMA.