Non-orthogonal multiple access for wireless downlink in cloud radio access networks

This paper investigates multiple access techniques for wireless downlink in cloud radio access networks (CRANs) where all base stations (BSs) are connected via a cloud. We first propose a power allocation scheme that makes use of non-orthogonal multiple access to allocate the power at the BSs based on their relative wireless distances to the cloud. Specifically, a successive interference cancellation mechanism is designed at the cloud to lay multiple BSs over each other in the power domain. We then analyse the achievable throughput of the NOMA in the CRANs. The derived expressions not only show the effectiveness of the proposed NOMA over the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) but also allow us to develop an algorithm to find the optimal number of BSs in the CRANs. Finally, numerical results are provided to show an improvement of up to eight times of the sum data rate and a higher number of BSs that could be maintained with the proposed NOMA over the OFDMA scheme as well as evaluating the impact of the wireless propagation environment and channel quality on the system throughput and cloud-edge throughput performance.