Abstract
The bit error rate (BER) analysis of non-orthogonal multiple access
(NOMA) has been widely considered in the literature with the assumptions
of perfect and imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC). For
both cases, exact closed-form formulas were derived under various
channel models, number of users, and modulation orders. However, all the
analysis reported overlooked the transformations that affect the
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) probability density function (PDF)
after the SIC process. Therefore, the signal model after the SIC process
is generally inaccurate, which makes the analysis just approximations
rather than exact. The same discussion applies to the analysis with
perfect SIC assumption because the noise after successful SIC is not
Gaussian anymore. Therefore, this letter derives the exact noise PDF
after the SIC process and evaluates its impact on the BER analysis. The
analytical results obtained show that the noise PDF after SIC should be
modeled as a truncated Gaussian mixture. Moreover, the PDF after
successful and unsuccessful SIC should be modeled differently. Comparing
the BER of the legacy perfect SIC formula and the exact one shows that
the BER using the exact PDF is generally less than the Gaussian case,
particularly for low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs)and low far-user power
allocation.