Resource allocation and BER performance analysis of NOMA based cooperative networks

Resource sharing and management can significantly improve the performance and spectral efficiency of wireless systems. In power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems, users share a common bandwidth for simultaneous data transmission and therfore, the spectral efficiency of the system will be improved at the expense of increased complexity. Provided proper power allocation, it is possible to detect symbols at receivers. In this paper, the downlink of a cellular system is considered where a base station (BS) communicates with two users using NOMA with the assistance of a decode-and-forward (DF) relay. In the proposed scheme, receivers combine received signals from direct and cooperative links, and decode symbols by employing successive interference cancellation (SIC). The bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed and the optimal power allocation is also derived through a Min–Max optimization, and a closed form approximate solution is proposed for binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. Furthermore, it is proved that the proposed receiver achieves full diversity order for all users for proper choice of power allocation. Simulation results also corroborate BER and diversity analysis.