Threshold-based Selective Cooperative-NOMA

In this letter, we propose threshold-based selective cooperative-NOMA (TBS-C-NOMA) to increase the data reliability of conventional cooperative-NOMA (C-NOMA) networks. In TBS-C-NOMA, the intra-cell user forwards the symbols of cell-edge user after successive interference canceler (SIC) only if the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) is greater than the pre-determined threshold value. Hence, the data reliability of the cell-edge user is increased by eliminating the effect of the error propagation. We derive closed-form end-to-end exact bit error probability (BEP) of proposed system for various modulation constellations. Then, the optimum threshold value is analyzed in order to minimize BEP. The obtained expressions are validated via simulations and it is revealed that TBS-C-NOMA outperforms C-NOMA and full diversity order is achieved

Simple Semi-Grant-Free Transmission Strategies Assisted by Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

Grant-free transmission is an important feature to be supported by future wireless networks since it reduces the signalling overhead caused by conventional grant-based schemes. However, for grant-free transmission, the number of users admitted to the same channel is not caped, which can lead to a failure of multi-user detection. This paper proposes non-orthogonal multiple-access (NOMA) assisted semi-grant-free (SGF) transmission, which is a compromise between grant-free and grant-based schemes. In particular, instead of reserving channels either for grant-based users or grant-free users, we focus on an SGF communication scenario, where users are admitted to the same channel via a combination of grant-based and grant-free protocols. As a result, a channel reserved by a grant-based user can be shared by grant-free users, which improves both connectivity and spectral efficiency. Two NOMA assisted SGF contention control mechanisms are developed to ensure that, with a small amount of signalling overhead, the number of admitted grant-free users is carefully controlled and the interference from the grant-free users to the grant-based users is effectively suppressed. Analytical results are provided to demonstrate that the two proposed SGF mechanisms employing different successive interference cancelation decoding orders are applicable to different practical network scenarios