New combined non-orthogonal multiple access techniques for wireless networks

Abstract

Thanks to orthogonal multiple access (OMA) schemes, connectivity is provided to multiple users, different services, or diverse applications by allocating non-overlapping hence orthogonal resource blocks (time, frequency, and code) in today's networks. The orthogonal resource allocation urges the exploitation of higher frequency bands toward visible light to provide wider bandwidths that accommodate the massive connectivity and the tremendous data traffic volume offered by the next-generation mobile networks. As 5G technology becomes available worldwide and 6G technology appears on the horizon, the only characteristic remaining unchanged is the need for the wider bandwidths. However, spectrum as an inherently scarce resource is already inefficiently used and the use of higher frequency bands causes coverage problems even if sensitive coverage planning is accomplished. Hence new techniques enhancing spectral efficiency and enabling hyper-connectivity are required for future networks. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) constitutes a promising solution for spectral efficiency and hyper-connectivity by allowing multiple users simultaneously to share the same resource block. NOMA benefits from multiplexing the signals from different sources by the nature of the wireless medium, where superposition coding is performed at the transmitter side leading to inter-user interference on purpose. To distinguish the different users at the receiver, successive interference cancellation (SIC) is applied. NOMA can be implemented in both downlink (DL) and uplink (UL). In downlink NOMA (DL-NOMA), a base station (BS) transmits the superposition coded signal to the users, contrary to the uplink NOMA (UL-NOMA), where the information flow is from the users to the BS. Hence, DL-NOMA differs from UL-NOMA in terms of the received superposition coded signal. The received signal is only affected by the respective channel fading coefficient in DL-NOMA. On the other hand, in the UL-NOMA where the signals of users are multiplexed over the air, the received superposition coded signal is not only the weighted sum of users' signals but also includes the respective channel fading coefficients of all users. Therefore adaptive SIC techniques are required to avoid error floor characteristics in the performance curves of UL-NOMA. In this thesis, NOMA has been studied in combination with other emerging technologies such as cooperative communication, full-duplex (FD) technology, cognitive radio (CR), energy harvesting (EH), and transmit diversity to further enhance spectral and energy efficiencies as well as to provide massive connectivity in a fair manner. Cooperative communication provides diversity by creating a virtual antenna array with the help of an intermediate relaying node in the lack of multiple antennas. Higher data rates and diversity gains are obtained, furthermore, coverage can be extended to unserved or underserved areas. CR is another promising solution to the inefficient use of spectrum, where unlicensed (secondary) users (SUs) can access the licensed (primary) users (PUs) band via dynamic spectrum access techniques. In the thesis, a cooperative NOMA (C-NOMA) scheme adopting a cognitive butterfly network design is considered, where far user's transmitter-receiver pair is assumed as PU and the near user's transmitter-receiver pair along with a relay is considered as SU. Butterfly network design involves both UL-NOMA and DL-NOMA transmission steps. Transmission from transmitter to the relay is according to the UL-NOMA principles while relay conveys the superposition coded signal to the receivers according to the DL-NOMA principles. Since the transmitter of each user is close to the receiver of other user while its receiver is near the other user's transmitter, the information from the side short links is also exploited to improve SIC performance. Although UL-NOMA has rarely found a place in the NOMA literature, it is a part of the end-to-end connection between transmitter-receiver pairs in this study and to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study combining UL-NOMA and DL-NOMA in one system configuration to investigate bit error probability (BEP) performance. Since the power allocation is of most importance and has a direct impact on performance, power allocation for both UL-NOMA and DL-NOMA steps of the end-to-end connection is investigated and the end-to-end BEP analyses are provided. A similar C-NOMA scheme adopting cognitive butterfly network design is examined by assuming that the relay has the ability to harvest energy from the radio frequency (RF) signals in the environment as a difference. It is assumed that energy harvesting can be applied by relay according to two energy harvesting architectures namely power splitting and ideal receiver. BEP analyses for both users in each energy harvesting architecture are performed. This study fills another gap in the NOMA literature, since a combination of C-NOMA, EH, and CR has not been investigated in terms of BEP performance yet. For both architectures, the comparisons between reference OMA schemes are also provided for the same energy and spectral efficiency to show their superiority. Although C-NOMA has advantages, cooperation degrades the spectral efficiency, which is the most significant advantage of NOMA, due to the need for an extra time slot. The potential of NOMA can be fulfilled thanks to FD technology providing the ability of simultaneous transmission and reception to relaying node. In the thesis, an UL C-NOMA network adopting FD technology is considered in the presence of a direct link between BS and the far user. It is assumed that there are multiple uniformly distributed near users within a disc seeking the opportunity to access the frequency band and the distance between BS and the far user determines the diameter of the disc. Since NOMA is not effective for more than 2 users, a user pairing strategy is performed to select a near user, which has the ability to work in FD mode. To eliminate the error floor in the performance curves, adaptive decoding order, namely hybrid SIC, is applied and compared to two SIC schemes, namely, channel state information (CSI)-based and quality-of-service (QoS)-based SIC, to show its superiority. CSI-based SIC has been widely studied in the NOMA literature, where decoding order is defined according to the CSIs of the users. In QoS-based SIC, the near user can access the band if the QoS requirement of the far user is ensured, otherwise, OMA is adopted. It is shown by the outage performance curves that hybrid SIC as a combination of CSI-based and QoS-based SIC eliminates the error floor characteristic in UL-NOMA networks and is robust to the self-interference caused by FD mode contrary to the other two SIC schemes. The computational complexity is also investigated and compared to that of the half-duplex NOMA scheme. Instead of the virtual antenna array, multiple antennas can be located at the transmitter to improve capacity and reliability. In this thesis, a transmit diversity scheme, coordinate interleaved orthogonal design (CIOD), is applied to DL-NOMA. CIOD performs an interleaving procedure where coordinates of the modulated signals experience independent channel fading coefficients resulting in modulation diversity. Two cell-edge users are served by two BSs from adjacent cells, hence multiple antenna technique is implemented in a distributed manner. BSs simultaneously transmit desired signals to both users according to the CIOD transmission principle, a $2\times2$ CIOD-NOMA matrix is emerged where the desired signals of users are located at reverse diagonals. BEP analyses are provided for both users. It is shown that full diversity is obtained at full rate for both users and significant coding gains are achieved. Power allocation is also investigated in terms of the tradeoff between fairness and BEP performance. Satisfactory fairness performance is achieved in return for an acceptable BEP degradation. Furthermore, another transmit diversity scheme is studied in the scope of this thesis. A two-stage transmit antenna selection (TAS) scheme where one among multiple antennas is chosen at BS, is investigated for DL-NOMA. The selection is based on the adopted performance criteria, which is chosen as the sum rate maximization in this study. In the first stage, an antenna subset maximizing sum rate is selected. In the second stage, Jain's fairness indices are obtained according to the individual achievable rates of the users and the antenna maximizing the fairness index is selected. With this scheme, the sum rate is maximized while fairness is ensured. Although the sum rate maximization by considering user fairness is significant, a working system requires an acceptable error performance. In NOMA, the users' signals can be distinguished at the receiver side thanks to the differences in their received signal powers. As the power difference between the signals increases, it becomes easier to distinguish them, which improves the SIC performance. Therefore, in this study a power allocation scheme is also considered to fix the difference between power allocation parameters which otherwise tend to be equal with the increasing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The power allocation scheme involves the maximization of the sum rate under the constraint of a target data rate for the far user. NOMA is recognized as an enabler for the next generation of mobile networks thanks to allowing massive connectivity and enhancing spectral efficiency and fairness between users. In the scope of this thesis, NOMA has been combined with above-mentioned emerging technologies, and the proposed protocols have been investigated in terms of BEPs and/or outage probabilities to fill the gaps in the NOMA literature.