System-Level Performance of C-NOMA: A Cooperative Scheme for Capacity Enhancements in 5G Mobile Networks

Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) is a promising scheme for improving the capacity of 5G networks. Since not all the users (UEs) in a cell are good candidates for NOMA, hybrid multiple access (MA) systems where NOMA and the typical orthogonal multiple access (OMA) schemes are combined, are expected. In this paper we propose cooperative NOMA (C-NOMA), which is based on cooperative scheduling and load balancing among a group of cells. Results from our system-level performance analysis show that in scenarios where only some cells are fully loaded, C-NOMA offers up to 3.5-fold increase in the UEs throughput compared to non-cooperative NOMA (NC-NOMA). Moreover, the cells experienced a capacity increase between 12-18%. Therefore, C-NOMA is an appealing scheme for improving the capacity in groups of cells with very unequal load, e.g. hotspot areas.

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