  It is well-known that the traditional transmit beamforming at a base station
(BS) to manage interference in serving multiple users is effective only when
the number of users is less than the number of transmit antennas at the BS.
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can improve the throughput of users with
poorer channel conditions by compromising their own privacy because other users
with better channel conditions can decode the information of users in poorer
channel state. NOMA still prefers that the number of users is less than the
number of antennas at the BS transmitter. This paper resolves such issues by
allocating separate fractional time slots for serving the users with similar
channel conditions. This enables the BS to serve more users within the time
unit while the privacy of each user is preserved. The fractional times and
beamforming vectors are jointly optimized to maximize the system's throughput.
An efficient path-following algorithm, which invokes a simple convex quadratic
program at each iteration, is proposed for the solution of this challenging
optimization problem. Numerical results confirm its versatility.
