Signal Processing and Learning for Next Generation Multiple Access in 6G

Wireless communication systems to date primarily rely on the orthogonality of resources to facilitate the design and implementation, from user access to data transmission. Emerging applications and scenarios in the sixth generation (6G) wireless systems will require massive connectivity and transmission of a deluge of data, which calls for more flexibility in the design concept that goes beyond orthogonality. Furthermore, recent advances in signal processing and learning have attracted considerable attention, as they provide promising approaches to various complex and previously intractable problems of signal processing in many fields. This article provides an overview of research efforts to date in the field of signal processing and learning for next-generation multiple access, with an emphasis on massive random access and non-orthogonal multiple access. The promising interplay with new technologies and the challenges in learning-based NGMA are discussed

Nonorthogonal Multiple Access for 5G and Beyond

This work was supported in part by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/N029720/1 and Grant EP/N029720/2. The work of L. Hanzo was supported by the ERC Advanced Fellow Grant Beam-me-up

A tutorial on the characterisation and modelling of low layer functional splits for flexible radio access networks in 5G and beyond

The centralization of baseband (BB) functions in a radio access network (RAN) towards data processing centres is receiving increasing interest as it enables the exploitation of resource pooling and statistical multiplexing gains among multiple cells, facilitates the introduction of collaborative techniques for different functions (e.g., interference coordination), and more efficiently handles the complex requirements of advanced features of the fifth generation (5G) new radio (NR) physical layer, such as the use of massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO). However, deciding the functional split (i.e., which BB functions are kept close to the radio units and which BB functions are centralized) embraces a trade-off between the centralization benefits and the fronthaul costs for carrying data between distributed antennas and data processing centres. Substantial research efforts have been made in standardization fora, research projects and studies to resolve this trade-off, which becomes more complicated when the choice of functional splits is dynamically achieved depending on the current conditions in the RAN. This paper presents a comprehensive tutorial on the characterisation, modelling and assessment of functional splits in a flexible RAN to establish a solid basis for the future development of algorithmic solutions of dynamic functional split optimisation in 5G and beyond systems. First, the paper explores the functional split approaches considered by different industrial fora, analysing their equivalences and differences in terminology. Second, the paper presents a harmonized analysis of the different BB functions at the physical layer and associated algorithmic solutions presented in the literature, assessing both the computational complexity and the associated performance. Based on this analysis, the paper presents a model for assessing the computational requirements and fronthaul bandwidth requirements of different functional splits. Last, the model is used to derive illustrative results that identify the major trade-offs that arise when selecting a functional split and the key elements that impact the requirements.This work has been partially funded by Huawei Technologies. Work by X. Gelabert and B. Klaiqi is partially funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-0) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101073265. Work by J. Perez-Romero and O. Sallent is also partially funded by the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreements No. 101096034 (VERGE project) and No. 101097083 (BeGREEN project) and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 under ARTIST project (ref. PID2020-115104RB-I00). This last project has also funded the work by D. Campoy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Hybrid generalized non-orthogonal multiple access for the 5G wireless networks.

Master of Science in Computer Engineering. University of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban, 2018.The deployment of 5G networks will lead to an increase in capacity, spectral efficiency, low latency and massive connectivity for wireless networks. They will still face the challenges of resource and power optimization, increasing spectrum efficiency and energy optimization, among others. Furthermore, the standardized technologies to mitigate against the challenges need to be developed and are a challenge themselves. In the current predecessor LTE-A networks, orthogonal frequency multiple access (OFDMA) scheme is used as the baseline multiple access scheme. It allows users to be served orthogonally in either time or frequency to alleviate narrowband interference and impulse noise. Further spectrum limitations of orthogonal multiple access (OMA) schemes have resulted in the development of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes to enable 5G networks to achieve high spectral efficiency and high data rates. NOMA schemes unorthogonally co-multiplex different users on the same resource elements (RE) (i.e. time-frequency domain, OFDMA subcarrier, or spreading code) via power domain (PD) or code domain (CD) at the transmitter and successfully separating them at the receiver by applying multi-user detection (MUD) algorithms. The current developed NOMA schemes, refered to as generalized-NOMA (G-NOMA) technologies includes; Interleaver Division Multiple Access (IDMA, Sparse code multiple access (SCMA), Low-density spreading multiple access (LDSMA), Multi-user shared access (MUSA) scheme and the Pattern Division Multiple Access (PDMA). These protocols are currently still under refinement, their performance and applicability has not been thoroughly investigated. The first part of this work undertakes a thorough investigation and analysis of the performance of the existing G-NOMA schemes and their applicability. Generally, G-NOMA schemes perceives overloading by non-orthogonal spectrum resource allocation, which enables massive connectivity of users and devices, and offers improved system spectral efficiency. Like any other technologies, the G-NOMA schemes need to be improved to further harvest their benefits on 5G networks leading to the requirement of Hybrid G-NOMA (G-NOMA) schemes. The second part of this work develops a HG-NOMA scheme to alleviate the 5G challenges of resource allocation, inter and cross-tier interference management and energy efficiency. This work develops and investigates the performance of an Energy Efficient HG-NOMA resource allocation scheme for a two-tier heterogeneous network that alleviates the cross-tier interference and improves the system throughput via spectrum resource optimization. By considering the combinatorial problem of resource pattern assignment and power allocation, the HG-NOMA scheme will enable a new transmission policy that allows more than two macro-user equipment’s (MUEs) and femto-user equipment’s (FUEs) to be co-multiplexed on the same time-frequency RE increasing the spectral efficiency. The performance of the developed model is shown to be superior to the PD-NOMA and OFDMA schemes

Resource allocation in non-orthogonal multiple access technologies for 5G networks and beyond.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.The increasing demand of mobile and device connectivity poses challenging requirements for 5G wireless communications, such as high energy- and spectral-efficiency and low latency. This necessitates a shift from orthogonal multiple access (OMA) to Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) techniques, namely, power-domain NOMA (PD-NOMA) and code-domain NOMA (CD-NOMA). The basic idea behind NOMA schemes is to co-multiplex different users on the same resource elements (time slot, OFDMA sub-carrier, or spreading code) via power domain (PD) or code domain (CD) at the transmitter while permitting controllable interference, and their successful multi-user detection (MUD) at the receiver albeit, increased computational complexity. In this work, an analysis on the performance of the existing NOMA schemes is carried out. Furthermore, we investigate the feasibility of a proposed uplink hybrid-NOMA scheme namely power domain sparse code multiple access (PD-SCMA) that integrates PD-NOMA and CD-NOMA based sparse code multiple access (SCMA) on heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Such hybrid schemes come with resource allocation (RA) challenges namely; codebook allocation, user pairing and power allocation. Therefore, hybrid RA schemes namely: Successive Codebook Ordering Assignment (SCOA) for codebook assignment (CA), opportunistic macro cell user equipment (MUE)- small cell user equipment (SUE) pairing (OMSP) for user pairing (UP), and a QoS-aware power allocation (QAPA) for power allocation (PA) are developed for an energy efficient (EE) system. The performance of the RA schemes is analyzed alongside an analytical RA optimization algorithm. Through numerical results, the proposed schemes show significant improvements in the EE of the small cells in comparison with the prevalent schemes. Additionally, there is significant sum rate performance improvement over the conventional SCMA and PD-NOMA. Secondly, we investigate the multiplexing capacity of the hybrid PD-SCMA scheme in HetNets. Particularly, we investigate and derive closed-form solutions for codebook capacity, MUE multiplexing and power capacity bounds. The system’s performance results into low outage when the system’s point of operation is within the multiplexing bounds. To alleviate the RA challenges of such a system at the transmitter, dual parameter ranking (DPR) and alternate search method (ASM) based RA schemes are proposed. The results show significant capacity gain with DPR-RA in comparison with conventional RA schemes. Lastly, we investigate the feasibility of integrating the hybrid PD-SCMA with multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) technique namely, M-PD-SCMA. The attention to M-PD-SCMA resides in the need of lower number of antennas while preserving the system capacity thanks to the overload in PDSCMA. To enhance spectral efficiency and error performance we propose spatial multiplexing at the transmitter and a low complex joint MUD scheme based on successive interference cancellation (SIC) and expectation propagation algorithm (EPA) at the receiver are proposed. Numerical results exhibit performance benchmark with PD-SCMA schemes and the proposed receiver achieves guaranteed bit error rate (BER) performance with a bounded increase in the number of transmit and receive antennas. Thus, the feasibility of an M-PD-SCMA system is validated

Performance Evaluation of Encrypted Text Message Transmission in 5G Compatible Frequency-domain Subband Superposed Scheme Implemented MIMO OFDM Wireless Communication System

In this paper, an investigative study has been made on the performance evaluation of encrypted text message transmission in 5G compatible multiuser frequency-domainsubband superposed (FDSS) scheme implemented MIMO OFDM wireless communication system. The 2D7;2 multiantenna configured simulated system under consideration incorporates modern channel coding (LDPC and Repeat and Accumulate (RA)) and signal detection (Cholesky decomposition based ZF detection, Group Detection (GD) approach aided Efficient Zero-Forcing (ZF) and Lanczos method based efficient signal detection) techniques. In the scenario of transmitting encrypted text message over AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels, it is noticeable that implementation of Repeat and Accumulate channel coding and Group Detection (GD) approach aided Efficient Zero- Forcing (ZF) signal detection techniques is very much robust and effective in retrieving transmitted text messages for all users