Optimal finite alphabet scheme for NOMA uplink channels

Abstract The design of an optimal non‐orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission scheme with finite alphabet inputs for a typical two‐user uplink wireless communication system is investigated in which each terminal is equipped with a single antenna. Each of the two users utilises a four quadrature amplitude modulation (4‐QAM) constellation to transmit information data to a common base station, and the receiver employs a maximum likelihood (ML) detector to jointly estimate both transmitted signals. Assuming the availability of channel state information at both the transmitters and the receiver, it is aimed to design a pair of scalar beamformers for the two users such that the minimum Euclidean distance between elements of the received sum‐constellation is maximised subject to the power constraints on the users. A thorough consideration of all the different conditions results in the derivation of a closed‐form optimal beamformer design. As well, examination of the construction of sum‐constellation resulted from the optimum design directly leads to the unique decoding of the original transmitted signal of each user. To facilitate practical implementation, a fast decoding procedure of the optimum NOMA scheme is further developed. The corresponding theoretic probability of ML detection error is also derived. The theoretical development of an optimum sum‐constellation for the basic 2‐user 4‐QAM system provides a solid platform for the derivation of an optimum sum‐constellation for a K ‐user and/or M ‐QAM system. Indeed, a simple development of the basic sum‐constellation map facilitates such extensions. Numerical simulations not only demonstrate that the performance of the fast decoder agrees closely with the theoretical analysis, but also verify that it is superior in performance to other existing NOMA designs for the same system under high signal‐to‐noise ratio.