Optimal Power Allocation Scheme for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access with α-Fairness

This paper investigates the optimal power allocation scheme for sum throughput maximization of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with α-fairness. In contrast to the existing fairness NOMA models, α-fairness can only utilize a single scalar to achieve different user fairness levels. Two different channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) assumptions are considered, namely, statistical and perfect CSIT. For statistical CSIT, fixed target data rates are predefined, and the power allocation problem is solved for sum throughput maximization with α-fairness, through characterizing several properties of the optimal power allocation solution. For perfect CSIT, the optimal power allocation is determined to maximize the instantaneous sum rate with α-fairness, where user rates are adapted according to the instantaneous channel state information (CSI). In particular, a simple alternate optimization algorithm is proposed, which is demonstrated to yield the optimal solution. Numerical results reveal that, at the same fairness level, NOMA significantly outperforms the conventional orthogonal multiple access for both the scenarios with statistical and perfect CSIT

Beamforming Techniques for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in 5G Cellular Networks

In this paper, we develop various beamforming techniques for downlink transmission for multiple-input single-output (MISO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. First, a beamforming approach with perfect channel state information (CSI) is investigated to provide the required quality of service (QoS) for all users. Taylor series approximation and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) techniques are employed to reformulate the original non-convex power minimization problem to a tractable one. Further, a fairness-based beamforming approach is proposed through a max-min formulation to maintain fairness between users. Next, we consider a robust scheme by incorporating channel uncertainties, where the transmit power is minimized while satisfying the outage probability requirement at each user. Through exploiting the SDR approach, the original non-convex problem is reformulated in a linear matrix inequality (LMI) form to obtain the optimal solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the robust scheme can achieve better performance compared to the non-robust scheme in terms of the rate satisfaction ratio. Further, simulation results confirm that NOMA consumes a little over half transmit power needed by OMA for the same data rate requirements. Hence, NOMA has the potential to significantly improve the system performance in terms of transmit power consumption in future 5G networks and beyond.Comment: accepted to publish in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technolog

Low Latency Driven Effective Capacity Analysis for Non-Orthogonal and Orthogonal Spectrum Access

In this paper, we theoretically investigate the performance of non-orthogonal and orthogonal spectrum access protocols (more generically known as NOMA) in supporting ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC). The theory of effective capacity (EC) is adopted as a suitable delay-guaranteed capacity metric to flexibly represent the users' delay requirements. Then, the total EC difference between a downlink user-paired NOMA network and a downlink orthogonal multiple access (OMA) network is analytically studied. Exact closed-form expressions and the approximated closed-forms at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) are derived for both networks and validated through simulation results. It is shown that for a user pair in which two users with the most distinct channel conditions are paired together, NOMA still achieves higher total EC (compared to OMA) in high SNR regime as the user group size becomes larger, although the EC performance of both NOMA and OMA reduces with the increase in group size. It is expected that the derived analytical framework can serve as a useful reference and practical guideline for designing favourable orthogonal and nonorthogonal spectrum access schemes in supporting low-latency services

Short-Packet Downlink Transmission with Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

This work introduces downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) into short-packet communications. NOMA has great potential to improve fairness and spectral efficiency with respect to orthogonal multiple access (OMA) for low-latency downlink transmission, thus making it attractive for the emerging Internet of Things. We consider a two-user downlink NOMA system with finite blocklength constraints, in which the transmission rates and power allocation are optimized. To this end, we investigate the trade-off among the transmission rate, decoding error probability, and the transmission latency measured in blocklength. Then, a one-dimensional search algorithm is proposed to resolve the challenges mainly due to the achievable rate affected by the finite blocklength and the unguaranteed successive interference cancellation. We also analyze the performance of OMA as a benchmark to fully demonstrate the benefit of NOMA. Our simulation results show that NOMA significantly outperforms OMA in terms of achieving a higher effective throughput subject to the same finite blocklength constraint, or incurring a lower latency to achieve the same effective throughput target. Interestingly, we further find that with the finite blocklength, the advantage of NOMA relative to OMA is more prominent when the effective throughput targets at the two users become more comparable.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. This is a longer version of a paper to appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Citation Information: X. Sun, S. Yan, N. Yang, Z. Ding, C. Shen, and Z. Zhong, "Short-Packet Downlink Transmission with Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access," IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., accepted to appear [Online] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8345745