This paper is concerned with sparse code multiple access (SCMA) with protograph-based low-density parity-check (P-LDPC) codes over Rayleigh fading channels. To be specific, we first propose a two-step design method consisting of both low-density factor graph (LDFG) and energy-based constellation superposition (ECS) principles to construct a new type of non-uniform codebooks (CBs), which have superior robustness against inter-user interference. We also develop a new segment-wise interleaved transmission (SWIT) scheme, which features a systematic optimization among repetition coding, resource mapping, and cross-slot data coupling, to further improve the performance of P-LDPC-coded SCMA. Additionally, we conceive a decoding-threshold-guided multi-objective optimization (DT-MOO) method to construct protograph-based enhanced multi-user codes (EMUCs), which exhibit excellent error-rate performance under both turbo and non-turbo decoding compared to traditional single-user and existing multi-user codes. Theoretical and simulated results validate the superiorities of proposed non-uniform SCMA scheme with SWIT and EMUCs compared to state-of-the-art benchmarks. Owing to the above advantages, the proposed designs are competent to provide massive connectivity and energy-efficient transmission for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) applications in 6G networks.

This work investigates iterative receiver and code design for protograph-coded overloaded sparse code multiple access (SCMA) systems. As a type of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technology, SCMA relies on an iterative detection and decoding (IDD) receiver to eliminate inter-user interference and channel noise. However, the existing IDD receiver requires a larger number of iterations to achieve successful convergence. To overcome this limitation, we propose aranked successive detection and decoding(R-SDD) receiver, which dynamically allocates computational resources to bottleneck users with the lowest reliability. This approach accelerates information convergence and improves error performance without increasing overall complexity. Moreover, we introduce afactor-graph-based(FG) interleaving scheme for the proposed SCMA systems, which outperforms the existing interleaver. To further enhance the error-correction capability for overloaded multi-user scenarios, we propose a new protograph design principle tailored for SCMA systems and develop two high-performance protograph low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, achieving over 0.3 dB improvement compared with the state-of-the-art alternatives. Owing to the salient advantages of the new iterative receiver and code design, the proposed SCMA system offers a promising solution for future high-bandwidth, high-reliability communication networks.

This work studies the transceiver design and convergence performance analysis for the hierarchical modulation (HM) systems with protograph-based low-density parity-check (P-LDPC) codes. Specifically, we first conceive new source-constrained (SC) coding scheme and inter-layer-cascaded (ILC) decoding scheme tailored for the HM-based transmitter and receiver, respectively. Both the proposed SC coding and ILC decoding schemes form an enhanced version of bit-interleaved-coded HM (BIC-HM) systems, namely source-constrained HM (SC-HM) systems, providing a more reliable and flexible multi-data transmission solution. Moreover, according to the SC coding principle, we conceive a novel variable-node-degree-based (VND) multiplexing scheme to further improve the performance of the proposed SC-HM systems. Additionally, based on the ILC decoding framework, we devise a novel mutual information (MI) analysis tool, namely ILC-based extrinsic-information-transfer (ILC-EXIT) algorithm, to predict the decoding thresholds of the proposed P-LDPC-coded SC-HM systems. Theoretical and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SC-HM systems significantly outperform the existing benchmarks in terms of error performance, decoding latency, and transmission-rate adaptation.