Resource Allocation for NOMA MEC Offloading

In this paper, we consider a nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) system where the power and time are jointly optimized to reduce the energy consumption and delay. In order to achieve a tradeoff between energy consumption and delay, we introduce weighting factors, and the optimization problem is formulated to minimize the weighted sum of energy consumption and delay. In the literature, only two offloading strategies, i. e., orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and pure NOMA, are mainly considered. In this paper, we investigate a third strategy, hybrid NOMA, which contains the strategies of OMA and pure NOMA. As the main contribution, we analytically characterize the optimal resource allocation, i. e., the joint power and time allocation, for two-scheduled-user case. Simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation method in hybrid NOMA systems yields lower energy consumption and delay than the conventional OMA scheme.