Performance Evaluation of NOMA for 5G Networks

In 5G networks, a new technology called Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) is employed to facilitate the process of data sharing between a BS and several users. In this NOMA scheme, it enables several users to share a same frequency by assigning different powers to each of them unlike traditional orthogonal multiple access schemes. We use MATLAB simulations to compare various NOMA based approaches like NOMA-Sum, NOMA-MaxMin, MUD, Hybrid-NOMA, and NOMA with Imperfect CSI and test them by varying the total provide power and user ranges. We focus on how much data each user receives (measured by the average rate) and assess whether the system is fair using the normalized standard deviation, which shows how evenly the data is shared among users a lower value means the system is more fair. The results show that while NOMA-Sum gives the highest speed to the stronger user it results in reduced performance for the weaker user. The results show that Hybrid-NOMA is about 51% fairer and gives over 4 times better data rate to weaker users than NOMA-Sum and is well-suited to real-world 5G systems.