Dynamic Power Allocation for Downlink Multi-Carrier NOMA Systems

Abstract

In this letter, the performance of optimal dynamic power allocation (PA) is analyzed for downlink multi-carrier non-orthogonal multiple access (MC-NOMA) systems. We study the PA optimization problem with a pair of users and weighted-sum-rate utility. A novel low-complexity algorithm is designed to solve the problem with a closed-form PA expression. The analytical data rate performance is derived and verified by simulation results. The numerical results indicate that a large difference in user channel states improves performance by enhancing the user diversity gain in NOMA systems. Moreover, the channel diversity gain can be achieved by multi-carrier transmission and increases with the number of subcarriers. Finally, the number of subcarriers for dynamic PA in MC-NOMA systems is discussed for practical applications.