Nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recognized as a key enabling techniques for future communication systems since it can take advantage of differences in users’ channel conditions to achieve higher spectral efficiency compared with orthogonal multiple access. However, employing such a capacity-centric framework can result in intragroup co-channel interference for those users whose symbols are intended to be first decoded, potentially causing a decrease in reliability. Therefore, the Alamouti encoding method has been widely used in the multiuser MISO-NOMA broadcast channels to improve reliability. Although the Alamouti-based NOMA paradigm can improve reliability by providing full spatial diversity, it comes at the cost of a significant loss in spectral efficiency compared to the capacity-centric NOMA framework. To overcome these limitations, this article presents a new approach for improving the performance of multiuser MISO-NOMA broadcast channels, in which the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff is leveraged more effectively by providing multiplexing for near users and diversity for far users at the transceiver. The closed-form expressions of ergodic sum-rate and outage probability for the proposed scheme are derived. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is capable of performing well in a wide range of scenarios and it surpasses traditional methods in terms of reliability and effectiveness.

Rate Splitting (RS) is a versatile and powerful technique for multi-antenna transmission. In this paper, we study the precoding optimization for RS, which is critically important for improving the system performance but often challenging to address. We first investigate the non-convex sum rate maximization problem under perfect Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT). By constructing a separable structure for the sum-of-functions-of-ratios problem and jointly leveraging the Convex Concave Procedure (CCP) and the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM), we obtain a fast algorithm that substantially reduces the overall computational time through the parallel computation and explicit closed-form solutions. We then investigate the average sum rate maximization problem under imperfect CSIT, which is known as a more challenging non-convex stochastic problem. To obtain a fast algorithm for practical use, we carefully approximate the non-convex stochastic problem to a non-convex deterministic one with acceptable performance loss and tailor the fast algorithm derived from perfect CSIT for imperfect CSIT with modest changes. Numerical results show that compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithms achieve comparable sum rates or average sum rates but short computation times for large problem sizes, owing to the unique parallel computation structures and few matrix inverse operations.

Multiple antenna technology and cooperative relaying are two efficient methods to improve the capacity and reliability of wireless networks. By marrying cooperative relaying with a Rate-Splitting (RS) approach, Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) shows certain benefits compared to several non-cooperative and cooperative schemes in multi-antenna Broadcast Channel (BC). In this paper, we further investigate the CRS with partial Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT), as partial CSIT is an inevitable issue in practical downlink Multi-user Multiple Input Single Output (MU-MISO) systems. The proposed CRS structure includes multiple users, and one user could be selected as a relay to help the other users. With the flexible design, CRS leverages the benefits of user cooperation and relay (or user) selection for cooperative network, and also retains the superiority of RS for multi-antenna BC. Considering the Weighted Average Sum Rate (WASR) performance, we aim to solve the stochastic optimization that jointly involves the precoder design, the time resource allocation, and the relay selection issue. To address the above non-convex problem, a dedicated algorithm for CRS that exploits the Weighted Minimum Mean Square Error (WMMSE) approach and the Convex-Concave Procedure (CCP) is proposed, such that the WASR is maximized by jointly updating the precoding matrix and time allocation factor according to the incoming user channel state estimate. The proposed algorithm then enables us to solve the relay selection through an exhaustive search. Since the optimal relay selection algorithm has a high computational complexity when the number of users is large, we additionally provide a suboptimal heuristic algorithm to strike a balance between complexity and performance. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed CRS scheme is capable of achieving a larger WASR than its non-cooperative counterpart and several existing beamforming schemes in a wide range of propagation conditions, and the heuristic algorithm achieves a performance close to the optimal one but with lower complexity.

Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) strategy, relying on linearly precoded rate-splitting at the transmitter and opportunistic transmission of the common message by the relaying user, has recently been shown to outperform typical Non-cooperative Rate-Splitting (NRS), Cooperative Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (C-NOMA) and Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) in a two-user Multiple Input Single Output (MISO) Broadcast Channel (BC) with user relaying. In this work, the existing twouser CRS transmission strategy is generalized to the K-user case. We study the problem of jointly optimizing the precoders, message split, time slot allocation, and relaying user scheduling with the objective of maximizing the minimum rate among users subject to a transmit power constraint at the base station. As the user scheduling problem is discrete and the entire problem is non-convex, we propose a two-stage low-complexity algorithm to solve the problem. Both centralized and decentralized relaying protocols based on selecting K1(K1<; K) strongest users are first proposed followed by a Successive Convex Approximation (SCA)-based algorithm to jointly optimize the time slot, precoders and message split. Numerical results show that by applying the proposed two-stage algorithm, the worst-case achievable rate achieved by CRS is significantly increased over that of NRS and SDMA in a wide range of network loads (underloaded and overloaded regimes) and user deployments (with a diversity of channel strengths). Importantly, the proposed SCA-based algorithm dramatically reduces the computational complexity without any rate loss compared with the conventional algorithm in the literature of CRS. Therefore, we conclude that the proposed K-user CRS combined with the two-stage algorithm is more powerful than the existing transmission schemes.

Due to its promising performance in a wide range of practical scenarios, Rate-Splitting (RS) has recently received significant attention in academia for the downlink of communication systems. In this letter, we propose and analyse a Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) strategy based on the three-node relay channel where the transmitter is equipped with multiple antennas. By splitting user messages and linearly precoding common and private streams at the transmitter, and opportunistically asking the relaying user to forward its decoded common message, CRS can efficiently cope with a wide range of propagation conditions (disparity of user channel strengths and directions) and compensate for the performance degradation due to deep fading. The precoder design and the resource allocation are optimized by solving the Weighted Sum Rate (WSR) maximization problem. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed CRS scheme can achieve an explicit rate region improvement compared to its non-cooperative counterpart and other cooperative strategies (such as cooperative NOMA).

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) have been widely regarded as two key techniques envisioned for 5G network. In this paper, we apply the core principle of antenna selection (AS) to multi-relay cooperative network, and propose a mechanism that has merits of both MIMO and NOMA. Then, in view of performance and complexity tradeoffs, a suboptimal joint selection scheme with reduced complexity is further presented. Furthermore, to characterize the achievable rates of proposed scheme, the lower and upper bounds of ergodic sum rate at high SNR are derived in closed form. The analytical results are valid for the evaluations for various antenna and relay configurations. Finally, through comprehensive simulations and comparisons, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme can outperform the conventional MIMO scheme or other relevant NOMA schemes in terms of ergodic sum rate and outage performance.