2018 Advances in Wireless and Optical Communications

Bit Error Rate Analysis of Non-Orthogonal

Multiple Access (NOMA) Technique in 5G with
Different Power and User Scenarios
Utku Ozmat
Huawei Turkey R&D Center
Wireless DC Department
Istanbul, Turkey
utku.ozmat@huawei.com
Oguz Ulgen
Huawei Turkey R&D Center
Wireless DC Department
Istanbul, Turkey
oguz.ulgen@huawei.com
Emre Gunaydin
Huawei Turkey R&D Center
Wireless DC Department
Istanbul, Turkey
emre.gunaydin@huawei.com

Abstract—Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a po-
tential multiple access technique for the fifth-generation (5G)
and beyond wireless networks. By allowing multiple users to
share the same time and frequency blocks by dividing their
power levels, NOMA can scale up the number of served users,
increase the spectral efficiency (SE), and improve bit error rate
(BER) compared to existing orthogonal multiple access (OMA)
techniques. This paper discusses the performance and challenges
of NOMA with various power allocation ratios and a different
number of users, comparatively. Simulation results are provided
at the end of the paper in terms of BER at the receiver end using
different power proportions and number of users that share the
same frequency resources.
Index Terms—Non-orthogonal multiple access, NOMA, power-
domain NOMA, 5G, successive interference cancellation, SIC.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The 5th generation (5G) and beyond technologies require
higher data rate, lower latency, energy and cost assumptions
compared to previous systems. This high data rate supports
1000 times capacity than 4th generation (4G) systems by
serving data for a huge number of users. The International
Telecommunication Union - Radio-communication Standard-
ization Sector (ITU-R) has defined three usage scenarios for
5G networks which are enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB),
ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and mas-
sive machine type communications (mMTC) [1]. These usage
scenarios bring that 5G networks can supply outstanding
capabilities, particularly in data rate and spectrum efficiency.
In order to address these challenges, several fundamental
technologies have been examined like massive multiple-input-
multiple-output (MIMO), millimeter-wave (mmWave) com-
munications, and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) [2].
NOMA has become a promising method for the design of
radio access techniques for the 5G wireless networks. Despite
various 5G multiple access (MA) techniques have been pro-
posed in both academia and industry, including power-domain
NOMA, sparse code multiple access (SCMA), pattern division
multiple access (PDMA), low density spreading (LDS), lattice
partition multiple access (LPMA), and interleave division
multiple access (IDMA), all of them amounts to the same idea,
enabling multiple users are served in each orthogonal resource
block (i.e. a time slot, a frequency channel, a spreading code,
or an orthogonal spatial degree of freedom) [3].
In contrast to NOMA, time division multiple access
(TDMA) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA) consist of only one user in each orthogonal resource
block. The spectral inefficiency of traditional orthogonal mul-
tiple access (OMA) techniques can be described as in the
following scenario. Assume that one user who has a very poor
channel condition and it requires to be accessed equitably. For
instance, this user has been high prioritized and has not been
accessed for a long duration. As the nature of OMA, it is
necessary that the rare bandwidth resources are only assigned
for this user even it has poor channel condition. Hence, the
spectrum efficiency and overall system throughput are not used
effectively in OMA techniques. In NOMA, users who have
better channel condition can use the same bandwidth resources
simultaneously as the weak user in addition to serving the
user who has poor channel condition. Therefore, if user equity
needs to be ensured, the overall system throughput of NOMA
can be considerably larger than OMA [3].
NOMA can be used as a substitute of OMA which provides
a new scheme by performing multiplexing within one of
the same time/frequency/code domains as shown in Fig. 1.
The main idea of NOMA is, to sum up power and code
domains in multiplexing for serving more users in the same
resource block [4]. Thereby the limited bandwidth resources
can be made available for more users by NOMA which
it significantly increases the capacity of 5G networks even
additional interference and complexity will be brought at the
receiver side [5].
In this paper, we provide a comparison of different power
allocation ratios in NOMA regarding to bit error rate (BER)
under two scenarios. Firstly, we evaluated two users with
variant power allocation ratios and compared them with each
other. In the second case, we included three users in the same
frequency and time in order to see the effect of a number of
users in the NOMA system.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the general
architecture of NOMA is discussed. In Section III, the system
model is analyzed. Section IV presents the simulation results

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Fig. 1. Spectrum sharing for OFDMA and NOMA for two users.
and Section V is the conclusion.
II. G ENERAL A RCHITECTURE OF NOMA
In order to satisfy requirements of 5G networks like higher
throughput, heterogeneous connectivity and a massive number
of devices, NOMA technique can be used by utilizing effective
interference cancellation and signal detection methods. The
main advantages of NOMA can be summarized as follows
[5], [6]:
• Improved spectral efficiency: NOMA performs a high
spectral efficiency (SE) and user-fairness by allowing
each resource block (e.g., same time/frequency/code do-
mains) to be used by multiple users.
• Ultra high connectivity: Massive connectivity can be
supported in NOMA since an arbitrary number of users
can be served in one resource block by superimposing all
users’ signals. Thereby, usage of NOMA for the Internet
of Things (IoT) applications is inevitable in order to
transmit small packets between a large number of devices.
• Relaxed channel feedback: NOMA does not need suc-
cessive uplink channel state information (CSI) at the
base station (BS). Alternatively, only the received signal
strength is involved in the channel feedback.
• Low transmission latency: Latency requirements of 5G
applications vary according to usage areas. However,
NOMA does not require to schedule requests from users
to the BS whereas it is needed in OMA for the uplink
channel. Therefore, the transmission latency is reduced
significantly by adopting a grant-free uplink transmission
in NOMA.
There are mainly two NOMA schemes in the literature
which are power-domain NOMA and code-domain NOMA.
Also to support massive connectivity for 5G networks, some
46
multiple domain solutions have been proposed which are pat-
tern division multiple access (PDMA), building block sparse-
constellation based orthogonal multiple access (BOMA), and
lattice partition multiple access (LPMA). In the following sub-
sections, we will introduce power-domain NOMA and code-
domain NOMA with emphasizing power-domain NOMA.
A. Power-Domain NOMA
Power-domain NOMA is proposed as a promising MA
scheme for 5G networks as it can achieve higher SE
than the OMA by multiplexing multiple users in the
power domain [7]. The traditional OMA techniques use
TDMA/FDMA/CDMA/OFDMA by assigning each orthogonal
resource blocks to different users in order to prevent the
multiple access interference (MAI). However, power domain
NOMA can serve multiple users within the same resource
block by differentiating them with power levels based on the
CSI. Consequently, NOMA is able to accommodate more users
and perform higher throughput even in limited resources.
The downlink transmission scheme of power-domain
NOMA for the two users case is illustrated in Fig. 2. In
this scheme, two users share the same frequency resource
block with a limitation in total power. The BS sends one
signal by superimposing the two signals of the two users in
respect to their power ratios. In order to guarantee overall
fairness and to apply diversity in the frequency domains,
the BS assigns different power levels depending on users’
downlink CSI which differs from the conventional power
allocation strategies [8]. In Fig. 2, the User-1 has more transmit
power due to smaller downlink channel gain and it is first
to be decoded while treating the User-2’s signal as noise.
After the signal of User-1 that has larger transmit power is
detected and decoded, this signal will be subtracted from the
received superimposed signal in order to enable the detection
of the signal for User-2. It is important that the User-1 has
the largest inter-user-interference and also if there is a signal
detection error in the User-1, this error will pass to the User-2
which shows the criticality of allocation adequate power level
between users. On the other hand, User-2 performs successive
interference cancellation (SIC). SIC is used for signal detection
at the receiver. For instance, it first decodes User-1’s message
and then removes this message from its observation before
decoding its own message. The extension of NOMA from
two to multiple user cases will be elaborated in the following
sections.
The power allocation for each user greatly affects the user
throughput performance. In symmetric downlink channel, the
users are at an equal distance to the BS, SN R1 = SN R2 = 10
dB. Fig. 3(a) shows the limits of the rate proportions for
NOMA and OFDMA users. As illustrated in Fig. 3(a), NOMA
achieves higher rate pairs than the OFDMA except at the
corners points (where the rates are equal to the single user
capacities). When the power ratio is equal, both users experi-
ence 1.6 bps/Hz throughputs with both NOMA and OFDMA.
However, when the power ratio is different, both total capacity
and throughput of each user are higher with NOMA. Fig. 3(b)
shows rate pairs when the channel is asymmetric, SN R1 = 20
 Fig. 2. Downlink transmission of power-domain NOMA.
(a) Symmetric channel
(b) Asymmetric channel
Fig. 3. Rate pairs with OFDMA and NOMA for downlink NOMA.
dB and SN R2 = 0 dB. NOMA depicts much higher rate
pairs than OFDMA, especially for the farther user [9]. The
derivation of users’ data rate is given in the next section.
In 5G networks, SE and energy efficiency (EE) are two vital
performance metrics due to limited resources. Since NOMA
divides same resource blocks to multiple users regarding to
users’ power level, it is significantly efficient with respect to
both spectrum and energy. EE can be defined as the rate of
47
Fig. 4. EE-SE trade-off comparison of NOMA and OFDMA.
the sum capacity over the total power consumption of the BS.
RT W
EE = = SE (bits/joule) (1)
Ptotal Ptotal
where RT is sum capacity, Ptotal is the total signal power
consumed by the BS and W is the transmission bandwidth.
Also SE can be represented as RT /W in terms of bps/Hz.
The comparison of power-domain NOMA and OFDMA is
illustrated in Fig. 4. The peak point of the each curve shows
that the maximum energy efficiency level of the system.
However, SE and EE cannot be maximized at the same time
in NOMA networks like in the most wireless networks.
B. Code-Domain NOMA
In code-domain NOMA, different codes are designated
to a different user in the same resource block in order
to support concurrently multiple transmissions. The unique
spreading sequences like sparse sequences or non-orthogonal
cross-correlation sequences of low correlation coefficient are
assessed for each user. The code-domain NOMA can be sep-
arated into three categories which are low-density spreading
CDMA (LDS-CDMA), low-density spreading OFDM (LDS-
OFDM), and sparse code multiple access (SCMA) [9]. Even
code-domain NOMA increases SE, it also needs a high trans-
mission bandwidth and brings extra complexity to the current
systems [10].
LDS-CDMA uses low-density architecture, which is similar
to the low-density parity-check (LDPC) matrix, is adopted for
the code-book design. On the other hand, LDS-OFDM differs
LDS-CDMA by mapping output of the signature into the
subcarriers of OFDM instead of the time samples in CDMA.
Hence, a low-complexity message passing algorithm (MPA)
detector can be employed. In SCMA, a similar sparse code-
book is integrated into the signature matrix like in LDS.
Thereby, a particular number of resource blocks can serve
more users by spreading. In addition to the sparse spreading,
SCMA also enables multi-dimensional constellations in order
to decrease complexity at the receiver and increase the SE
[11].
 III. S YSTEM M ODEL TABLE I
S IMULATION PARAMETERS
In this section, the system model of this paper is explained.
It has been considered that a BS transmits a signal for ith user Parameter Name Value
Total Number of symbols 1064960
with the transmission power Pi . Then the transmitted signal Turbo code length 1280
is given as: Cyclic prefix proportion 0.25
Number of OFDM subcarriers 64
N Number of data carriers 52
X p Modulation QPSK
s= si Pi (2) Channel Rayleigh
i=1 0.1/0.9, 0.2/0.8 and
Case 1: Two users
Power ratio of each NOMA 0.3/0.7
where si is superimposed signal of the i users and user Case 2: Three users
0.01/0.19/0.8 and
0.01/0.29/0.7
i [1, · · · , N ]. For clarity, we have assumed that N = 2, i = 1
denotes the near user whereas i = 2 is the far user from the
BS. The received signal for the it h user is given as: We have assumed that perfect SIC receiver is employed
at the receiver side which means that the near user has
yi = hi × s + ni 
P
N √ (3) all knowledge of the far users’ signal information. Hence,
yi = hi × i=1 si Pi + ni interference from the far users can be perfectly canceled at the
near receiver by using SIC [10]. In total i users, the detection
where hi is the channel coefficient from BS to the it h user, of user-a’s signal using perfect SIC can be written from the
ni is the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with zero equation (4):
mean and σn2 variance. The achievable data rate Ri for each
user is given by:

 y − PN
 √ 
i=a+1 si Pi 

 a
2
! sa =  √  (7)
βi P |hi | Pa
Ri = log2 1 + 2 PN
(4)
P |hi | 2
k=i+1 βk + σn where b.c indicates that the detection process of the signal
where βi denotes the power assignment ratio of the ith user including its demodulation operation. For two users case, (6)
by adhering to β1 + β2 + · · · + βN = 1. Itshould be noted  can be rewritten for user-1 (the near user) as:
2
that the data rate of user UN is RN = log2 1 + βN Pσ|h N|
,  √ 
2
n y1 − s2 P2
as this user successively decodes and cancels all other users’ s1 = √ (8)
P1
signals before to decoding its own signal [12].
In downlink NOMA, the SIC is applied at the receiver side, Next section contains the simulation results for near user
therefore the optimal order of decoding the received signal and far users BER performance in downlink NOMA for two
is critical [13]. This order is determined based on the CSI users and three users cases by comparing different power
which can be considered as channel gain normalized by noise allocations.
2
|hi | /N0,i . Thereby, any user with higher channel gain can IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
correctly decode its signal from the superimposed signal as per
its order. Let consider that the user-a can decode the signals This section contains the simulation results for both near
2 2
of the users if |hi | /N0,i is lower than |ha | /N0,a . In this user and far users using the perfect SIC conditions in downlink
case, the desired signal of user-a is given as: NOMA. There are two cases based on the number of users
which are two users and three users. The regarding simulation
! parameters are listed in Table I and MATLAB is used as
N
p X p the simulation tool. In the simulation a result, the x-axis is
ya = ha × sa Pa + ha × si Pi +ni (5)
| {z } defined by the SNR of the users and the y-axis gives the BER
i=a+1
Desired Signal | {z } performance of near and far users.
To be removed using SIC In the first case, there are two NOMA users in the same
In two users case, i = 1, 2, based on above criteria, when frequency domain. In Fig. 5, the power allocation pairs of two
2 2 NOMA users are selected 10%, 20% and 30% for the near user
|h1 | /N0,1 > |h2 | /N0,2 the user-1 implements the SIC since
it is in the order which means that the user-1 has higher whereas 90%, 80% and 70% for the far user, respectively.
channel gain than the user-2. Therefore, (4) can be re-written BER performance of NOMA users is compared in terms
for user-1 as: of different power pairs. As it is shown in Fig. 5, when
the users’ power level converges to each other, regarding
BER performance decreases due it gets harder to cancel the
p p
y1 = h1 × s1 P1 + h1 × s2 P2 +n1 (6)
| {z } | {z } interference of the other user.
Desired Signal To be removed using SIC
In the second case, three users share the same frequency
From the equation (5), the received signal at the near user is domain in respect to their power allocations. The first power
given, after SIC is performed in order to remove the unwanted triad is determined as 1%, 19% and 80% whereas the second
signals from other users by decoding the desired information. one is 1%, 29% and 70% in order to see the effect of power

48
Fig. 5. BER performance of NOMA by utilizing different power allocation
of two users.
allocation ratio between far users by remaining the nearest
user’s power as 1%. Also, it is clear that to add more users
in the same resource block improves the spectral efficiency.
However, it brings also system complexity at the receiver
side while canceling the other users’ signals which negatively
effects the BER performance.
Similar to the first case, the same results are shown in
Fig. 6. In case of three users are placed the same frequency
block by using NOMA technique, it is also demonstrated the
SIC success directly related to power ratios of users. When
the difference is increased between the power ratio of users,
overall BER probability decreases.
From the recent studies on downlink NOMA, we found that
most of the research concentrates on the transmitter part but
very limited work has been performed on the receiver side.
This is mainly because of the complexity faced in retrieving
the near user signal, especially when it comes to more than
two users cases as the near has to perform SIC for multiple
users with low channel gain that are superimposed in the same
signal. In perfect SIC, it is not difficult to retrieve the near
signal with multiple superimposed far user signals except for
the device processing capability.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this study, the effects of different power allocation ratios
and number of users are investigated in a NOMA system. In
addition to two users case, we also considered that three users
case in order to increase spectrum efficiency. From the results
it can be seen that when power level difference increases
between NOMA users, BER performance also gives better
results since the detection of to be removed part in the received
signal is less complex. This study can be further extended by
creating more realistic scenarios in imperfect SIC condition
and employing adaptive beam-forming techniques in MIMO-
NOMA systems.
49
Fig. 6. BER performance of NOMA by utilizing power allocation of three
users.
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