Power Allocation for Reliable SIC Detection of Rectangular QAM-based
NOMA Systems
Abstract
This paper considers the power allocation for non-orthogonal multiple
access (NOMA) users to enable using the successive interference
cancellation (SIC) while providing reliable error performance. The
derived closed-form expressions are applicable for arbitrary number of
NOMA users each of which has a square or rectangular quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation with arbitrary order. The
obtained numerical results show that power assignment process at the
transmitter for the superposition process and at the receiver for the
SIC process should be performed meticulously because the power
difference between the weakest and strongest users can be tremendous
when the number of users or the modulation orders increase. Moreover,
the derived expressions can be used to reduce the computational
complexity that is required to obtain the optimal power coefficients
using brute force methods by significantly reducing the search space.