Resource Allocation in Multicarrier NOMA Systems Based on Optimal Channel Gain Ratios

The application of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to multicarrier systems can improve the spectrum efficiency and enable massive connectivity in future mobile systems. Resource allocation in multicarrier NOMA systems is a nondeterministic polynomial time-hard problem requiring exhaustive search, which has prohibitive computational complexity. Instead, efficient algorithms that provide a good trade-off between system performance and implementation practicality are needed. In this paper, exact values of the optimal channel gain ratios between a pair of NOMA users are presented for the first time for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes. Further, numerical limits are derived for the values of channel gain ratios that fulfill the system constraints. These findings are used to propose a user pairing algorithm with quasi-linear complexity. Further, a novel scheme for data rate and continuous power allocation is proposed. Through numerical simulations, it is proved that the proposed scheme yields an achievable sum-rate close to the performance of exhaustive search, and it outperforms other suboptimal resource allocation schemes.