High altitude platform (HAP), known as line-of-sight dominated communications, effectively enhance the spectral efficiency of wireless networks. However, the line-of-sight links, particularly in urban areas, may be severely deteriorated due to the complex communication environment. The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is employed to establish the cascaded-link and improve the quality of communication service by smartly reflecting the signals received from HAP to users without direct-link. Motivated by this, the joint precoding scheme for a novel RIS-aided beamspace HAP with non-orthogonal multiple access (HAP-NOMA) system is investigated to maximize the minimum user signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (SLNR) by considering user fairness. Specifically, the SLNR is utilized as metric to design the joint precoding algorithm for a lower complexity, because the isolation between the precoding obtainment and power allocation can make the two parts be attained iteratively. To deal with the formulated non-convex problem, we first derive the statistical upper bound on SLNR based on the random matrix theory in large scale antenna array. Then, the closed-form expressions of power matrix and passive precoding matrix are given by introducing auxiliary variables based on the derived upper bound on SLNR. The proposed joint precoding only depends on the statistical channel state information (SCSI) instead of instantaneous channel state information (ICSI). NOMA serves multi-users simultaneously in the same group to compensate for the loss of spectral efficiency resulted from the beamspace HAP. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the derived statistical upper bound on SLNR and the performance enhancement of the proposed joint precoding algorithm.

This paper extends our previously reported non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based highly-efficient and low-latency hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) method for ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) to the case with inter-base station cooperation. In the proposed method, delay-sensitive URLLC packets are preferentially multiplexed with best-effort enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) packets in the same channel using superposition coding to reduce the transmission latency of the URLLC packet while alleviating the throughput loss in eMBB. Although data transmission to the URLLC terminal is conducted by multiple base stations based on inter-base station cooperation, the proposed method allocates radio resources to URLLC terminals which include scheduling (bandwidth allocation) and power allocation at each base station independently to achieve the short transmission latency required for URLLC. To avoid excessive radio resource assignment to URLLC terminals due to independent resource assignment at each base station, which may result in throughput degradation in eMBB terminals, we employ an adaptive path-loss-dependent weighting approach in the scheduling-metric calculation. This achieves appropriate radio resource assignment to URLLC terminals while reducing the packet error rate (PER) and transmission delay time thanks to the inter-base station cooperation. We show that the proposed method significantly improves the overall performance of the system that provides simultaneous eMBB and URLLC services.

This paper proposes low complexity resource allocation in frequency domain non-orthogonal multiple access where many devices access with a base station. The number of the devices is assumed to be more than that of the resource for network capacity enhancement, which is demanded in massive machine type communications (mMTC). This paper proposes two types of resource allocation techniques, all of which are based on the MIN-MAX approach. One of them seeks for nicer resource allocation with only channel gains. The other technique applies the message passing algorithm (MPA) for better resource allocation. The proposed resource allocation techniques are evaluated by computer simulation in frequency domain non-orthogonal multiple access. The proposed technique with the MPA achieves the best bit error rate (BER) performance in the proposed techniques. However, the computational complexity of the proposed techniques with channel gains is much smaller than that of the proposed technique with the MPA, whereas the BER performance of the proposed techniques with channel gains is only about 0.1dB inferior to that with the MPA in the multiple access with the overloading ratio of 1.5 at the BER of 10-4. They attain the gain of about 10dB at the BER of 10-4 in the multiple access with the overloading ration of 2.0. Their complexity is 10-16 as small as the conventional technique.

Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) is an essential technology that efficiently reduces the transmission error rate. However, for ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) in the 5th generation mobile communication systems and beyond, the increase in latency due to retransmission must be minimized in HARQ. In this paper, we propose a highly-efficient low-latency HARQ method built on non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for URLLC while minimizing the performance loss for coexisting services (use cases) such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB). The proposed method can be seen as an extension of the conventional link-level non-orthogonal HARQ to the system-level protocol. This mitigates the problems of the conventional link-level non-orthogonal HARQ, which are decoding error under poor channel conditions and an increase in transmission delay due to restrictions in retransmission timing. In the proposed method, delay-sensitive URLLC packets are preferentially multiplexed with best-effort eMBB packets in the same channel using superposition coding to reduce the transmission latency of the URLLC packet while alleviating the throughput loss in eMBB. This is achieved using a weighted channel-aware resource allocator (scheduler). The inter-packet interference multiplexed in the same channel is removed using a successive interference canceller (SIC) at the receiver. Furthermore, the transmission rates for the initial transmission and retransmission are controlled in an appropriate manner for each service in order to deal with decoding errors caused by error in transmission rate control originating from a time varying channel. We show that the proposed method significantly improves the overall performance of a system that simultaneously provides eMBB and URLLC services.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), which combines multiple user signals and transmits the combined signal over one channel, can achieve high spectral efficiency for mobile communications. However, combining the multiple signals can lead to degradation of bit error rates (BERs) of NOMA under severe channel conditions. In order to improve the BER performance of NOMA, this paper proposes a new NOMA scheme based on orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs). The proposed scheme transmits several multiplexed signals over their respective orthogonal time-frequency channels, and can gain diversity effects due to the orthogonality of OSTBC. Furthermore, the new scheme can detect the user signals using low-complexity linear detection in contrast with the conventional NOMA. The paper focuses on the Alamouti code, which can be considered the simplest OSTBC, and theoretically analyzes the performance of the linear detection. Computer simulations under the condition of the same bit rate per channel show that the Alamouti code based scheme using two channels is superior to the conventional NOMA using one channel in terms of BER performance. As shown by both the theoretical and simulation analyses, the linear detection for the proposed scheme can maintain the same BER performance as that of the maximum likelihood detection, when the two channels have the same frequency response and do not bring about any diversity effects, which can be regarded as the worst case.

In this paper, a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided full-duplex (FD) cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (CNOMA) network is investigated over Nakagami-m fading channels, where two RISs are employed to help the communication of paired users. To evaluate the potential benefits of our proposed scheme, we first derive the closed-form expressions of the outage probability. Then, we derive users' diversity orders according to the asymptotic approximation at high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). Simulation results validate our analysis and reveal that users' diversity orders are affected by their channel fading parameters, the self-interference of FD, and the number of RIS elements.

In this paper, we investigate the sum rate (SR) maximization problem for downlink cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (C-NOMA) system under in-phase and quadrature-phase (IQ) imbalance at the base station (BS) and destination. The BS communicates with users by a half-duplex amplified-and-forward (HD-AF) relay under imperfect IQ imbalance. The sum rate maximization problem is formulated as a non-convex optimization with the quality of service (QoS) constraint for each user. We first use the variable substitution method to transform the non-convex SR maximization problem into an equivalent problem. Then, a joint power and rate allocation algorithm is proposed based on successive convex approximation (SCA) to maximize the SR of the systems. Simulation results verify that the algorithm can improve the SR of the C-NOMA compared with the cooperative orthogonal multiple access (C-OMA) scheme.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has the capability of boosting system performance by manipulating the wireless propagation environment. This paper investigates a downlink RIS-aided non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, where a RIS is deployed to enhance physical-layer security (PLS) in the presence of an eavesdropper. In order to improve the main link's security, the RIS is deployed between the source and the users, in which a reflecting element separation scheme is developed to aid data transmission of both the cell-center and the cell-edge users. Additionally, the closed-form expressions of secrecy outage probability (SOP) are derived for the proposed RIS-aided NOMA scheme. To obtain more deep insights on the derived results, the asymptotic performance of the derived SOP is analyzed. Moreover, the secrecy diversity order is derived according to the asymptotic approximation in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and main-to-eavesdropper ratio (MER) regime. Furthermore, based on the derived results, the power allocation coefficient and number of elements are optimized to minimize the system SOP. Simulations demonstrate that the theoretical results match well with the simulation results and the SOP of the proposed scheme is clearly less than that of the conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) scheme obviously.

5G has achieved large-scale commercialization across the world and the global 6G research and development is accelerating. To support more new use cases, 6G mobile communication systems should satisfy extreme performance requirements far beyond 5G. The physical layer key technologies are the basis of the evolution of mobile communication systems of each generation, among which three key technologies, i.e., duplex, waveform and multiple access, are the iconic characteristics of mobile communication systems of each generation. In this paper, we systematically review the development history and trend of the three key technologies and define the Non-Orthogonal Physical Layer (NOPHY) concept for 6G, including Non-Orthogonal Duplex (NOD), Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and Non-Orthogonal Waveform (NOW). Firstly, we analyze the necessity and feasibility of NOPHY from the perspective of capacity gain and implementation complexity. Then we discuss the recent progress of NOD, NOMA and NOW, and highlight several candidate technologies and their potential performance gain. Finally, combined with the new trend of 6G, we put forward a unified physical layer design based on NOPHY that well balances performance against flexibility, and point out the possible direction for the research and development of 6G physical layer key technologies.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) allows several users to multiplex in the power-domain to improve spectral efficiency. To further improve its performance, it is desirable to reduce inter-user interference (IUI). In this paper, we propose a downlink asynchronous NOMA (ANOMA) scheme applicable to frequency-selective channels. The proposed scheme introduces an intentional symbol offset between the multiplexed signals to reduce IUI, and it employs cyclic-prefixed single-carrier transmission with frequency-domain equalization (FDE) to reduce inter-symbol interference. We show that the mean square error for the FDE of the proposed ANOMA scheme is smaller than that of a conventional NOMA scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed ANOMA with appropriate power allocation achieves a better sum rate compared to the conventional NOMA.

In this paper, we propose a non-orthogonal multiple access with adaptive resource allocation. The proposed non-orthogonal multiple access assigns multiple frequency resources for each device to send packets. Even if the number of devices is more than that of the available frequency resources, the proposed non-orthogonal access allows all the devices to transmit their packets simultaneously for high capacity massive machine-type communications (mMTC). Furthermore, this paper proposes adaptive resource allocation algorithms based on factor graphs that adaptively allocate the frequency resources to the devices for improvement of the transmission performances. This paper proposes two allocation algorithms for the proposed non-orthogonal multiple access. This paper shows that the proposed non-orthogonal multiple access achieves superior transmission performance when the number of the devices is 50% greater than the amount of the resource, i.e., the overloading ratio of 1.5, even without the adaptive resource allocation. The adaptive resource allocation enables the proposed non-orthogonal access to attain a gain of about 5dB at the BER of 10-4.

The application of compressed sensing (CS) theory to non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems has been investigated recently. As described in this paper, we propose a quality-of-service (QoS)-aware, low-complexity, CS-based user selection and power allocation scheme with adaptive resource block selection for downlink NOMA systems, where the tolerable interference threshold is designed mathematically to achieve a given QoS requirement by being relaxed to a constrained l1 norm optimization problem. The proposed scheme adopts two adaptive resource block (RB) selection algorithms that assign proper RB to user pairs, i.e. max-min channel assignment and two-step opportunistic channel assignment. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is more effective at improving the user rate than other reference schemes while reducing the required complexity. The QoS requirement is approximately satisfied as long as the required QoS value is feasible.

Sparse code division multiple access (SCMA) is a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technology that can improve frequency band utilization and allow many users to share quite a few resource elements (REs). This paper uses the modulation of lattice theory to develop a systematic construction procedure for the design of SCMA codebooks under Gaussian channel environments that can achieve near-optimal designs, especially for cases that consider large-scale SCMA parameters. However, under the condition of large-scale SCMA parameters, the mother constellation (MC) points will overlap, which can be solved by the method of the partial dimensions transformation (PDT). More importantly, we consider the upper bounded error probability of the signal transmission in the AWGN channels, and design a codeword allocation method to reduce the inter symbol interference (ISI) on the same RE. Simulation results show that under different codebook sizes and different overload rates, using two different message passing algorithms (MPA) to verify, the codebook proposed in this paper has a bit error rate (BER) significantly better than the reference codebooks, moreover the convergence time does not exceed that of the reference codebooks.

This paper investigates the sum rate (SR) maximization problem for downlink cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (C-NOMA) systems with hardware impairments (HIs). The source node communicates with users via a half-duplex amplified-and-forward (HD-AF) relay with HIs. First, we derive the SR expression of the systems under HIs. Then, SR maximization problem is formulated under maximum power of the source, relay, and the minimum rate constraint of each user. As the original SR maximization problem is a non-convex problem, it is difficult to find the optimal resource allocation directly by tractional convex optimization method. We use variable substitution method to convert the non-convex SR maximization problem to an equivalent convex optimization problem. Finally, a joint power and rate allocation based on interior point method is proposed to maximize the SR of the systems. Simulation results show that the algorithm can improve the SR of the C-NOMA compared with the cooperative orthogonal multiple access (C-OMA) scheme.

This letter proposes a downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) non-orthogonal multiple access technique that mitigates multi-cell interference (MCI) at cell-edge users, regardless of the number of interfering cells, thereby improving the spectral efficiency. This technique employs specific receive beamforming vectors at the cell-edge users in clusters to minimize the MCI. Based on the receive beamforming vectors adopted by the cell-edge users, the transmit beamforming vectors for a base station (BS) and the receive beamforming vectors for cell-center users are designed to eliminate the inter-cluster interference and maximize the spectral efficiency. As each user can directly obtain its own receive beamforming vector, this technique does not require channel feedback from the users to a BS to design the receive beamforming vectors, thereby reducing the system overhead. We also derive the upper bound of the average sum rate achievable using the proposed technique. Finally, we demonstrate through simulations that the proposed technique achieves a better sum rate performance than the existing schemes and that the derived upper bound is valid.

This paper investigates the resource allocation problem for the downlink of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks. A novel resource allocation method is proposed to deal with the problem of maximizing the system capacity while taking into account user fairness. Since the optimization problem is nonconvex and intractable, we adopt the idea of step-by-step optimization, decomposing it into user pairing, subchannel and power allocation subproblems. First, all users are paired according to their different channel gains. Then, the subchannel allocation is executed by the proposed subchannel selection algorithm (SSA) based on channel priority. Once the subchannel allocation is fixed, to further improve the system capacity, the subchannel power allocation is implemented by the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach where the nonconvex optimization problem is transformed into the approximated convex optimization problem in each iteration. To ensure user fairness, the upper and lower bounds of the power allocation coefficients are derived and combined by introducing the tuning coefficients. The power allocation coefficients are dynamically adjustable by adjusting the tuning coefficients, thus the diversified quality of service (QoS) requirements can be satisfied. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over the existing methods in terms of system performance, furthermore, a good tradeoff between the system capacity and user fairness can be achieved.

We propose a novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based optimal multiplexing method for multiple downlink service channels to maximize the integrated system throughput. In the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication system, the support of various wireless communication services such as massive machine-type communications (mMTC), ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC), and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) is expected. These services will serve different numbers of terminals and have different requirements regarding the spectrum efficiency and fairness among terminals. Furthermore, different operators may have different policies regarding the overall spectrum efficiency and fairness among services. Therefore, efficient radio resource allocation is essential during the multiplexing of multiple downlink service channels considering these requirements. The proposed method achieves better system performance than the conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA)-based multiplexing method thanks to the wider transmission bandwidth per terminal and inter-terminal interference cancellation using a successive interference canceller (SIC). Computer simulation results reveal that the effectiveness of the proposed method is especially significant when the system prioritizes the fairness among terminals (including fairness among services).

In this letter, we investigate the price-based power allocation for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks, where the base station (BS) can admit the users to transmit by pricing their power. Stackelberg game is utilized to model the pricing and power purchasing strategies between the BS and the users. Based on backward induction, the pricing problem of the BS is recast into the non-convex power allocation problem, which is equivalent to the rate allocation problem by variable replacement. Based on the equivalence problem, an optimal price-based power allocation algorithm is proposed to maximize the revenue of the BS. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the existing pricing algorithm in items of the revenue of BS and the number of admitted users.

This letter presents a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique for a two-cell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system that exploits the alignments of inter-cell interference channels and signal channels within a cluster in a cell. The proposed technique finds combiner vectors for users that align the inter-cell interference channels and the signal channels simultaneously. This technique utilizes the aligned interference and signal channels to obtain precoder matrices for base stations through which each data stream modulated by NOMA can be transmitted to the intended cluster without interference. In addition, we derive the sufficient condition for transmit and receive antenna configurations in the MIMO NOMA systems to eliminate inter-cell interference and inter-cluster interference simultaneously. Because the proposed technique effectively suppresses the inter-cell interference, it achieves a higher degree of freedom than the existing techniques relying on an avoidance of inter-cell interference, thereby obtaining a better sum rate performance in high SNR regions. Furthermore, we present the hybrid MIMO NOMA technique, which combines the MIMO NOMA technique exploiting channel alignment with the existing techniques boosting the received signal powers. Using the benefits from these techniques, the proposed hybrid technique achieves a good performance within all SNR regions. The simulation results successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques on the sum rate performance.

In fifth-generation mobile communications systems (5G), grant-free non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes have been considered as a way to accommodate the many wireless connections required for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In NOMA schemes, both system capacity enhancement and transmission protocol simplification are achieved, and an overload test of more than one hundred percent of the transmission samples over conducted. Multi-user shared multiple access (MUSA) has been proposed as a representative scheme for NOMA. However, the performance of MUSA has not been fully analyzed nor compared to other NOMA or orthogonal multiple access schemes. Therefore, in this study, we theoretically and numerically analyze the performance of MUSA in uplink fading environments and compare it with orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), space division multiple access-based OFDMA, low-density signature, and sparse code multiple access. The characteristics and superiority of MUSA are then clarified.