Adaptive Cooperative Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access-Based Power Line Communication

Abstract

This paper proposes an adaptive cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme for power line communication (PLC) networks, in which the source superimposes the data symbols to two users. Specifically, the source communicates with the far-user with the assistance of relay. Meanwhile, depending on negligible 1-bit feedback, the near-user is reached through an adaptive way which switches between a direct and a cooperative data transmission mode, resulting in an enhancement of the system throughput and a more reliable data reception at the near-user. For this setting, we then analyze the system throughput over the log-normal distributed channel fading with the impulsive noise and investigate the impact of key system parameters. The simulation results validate the theoretical analysis and show that our scheme can obtain a better throughput performance with lower power consumption and reduce the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues for PLC networks more efficiently than the time division multiple access (TDMA) and traditional cooperative NOMA (TCN) schemes. INDEX TERMS Power line communication (PLC), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), log-normal distribution, impulsive noise, system throughput.

Cooperative Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access over Log-Normal Power Line Communication Channels

“…The relay aids communication between the source and two users (near and far users) due to the high signal attenuation of the direct link. This is in contrast to the system model studied in References [21,24], where a direct link exists between the source and the near user. We study the system model under a log-normal fading assumption with impulsive noise characteristic to PLC networks [25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…ρ S and ρ R denote the source and relay transmit SNR. In this work, we assume erasure decoding, where the received signals affected by impulsive noise are discarded in the decoding process [19][20][21]. An outage occurs when the achievable rate is less than the predefined target rate.…”

“…As an enabler of smart grid (SG) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, power line communication (PLC) is seen as an attractive and promising technique due to the ubiquitous nature of power lines [18]. Naturally, the application of NOMA to PLC can only prove beneficial [19][20][21][22]. In Reference [19], user relaying NOMA with DF protocol was proposed for PLC systems.…”

“…The authors of [20] studied a two-stage NOMA scheme, where NOMA is applied at both the source and the user relay, which is shown to outperform the one-stage system in Reference [19]. An adaptive cooperative NOMA scheme for PLC was proposed in Reference [21], where a dedicated DF relay establishes communication between a source modem and two user modems. Depending on the feedback information in the second phase, a direct or cooperative transmission increases the system throughput performance compared to TDMA and a conventional cooperative NOMA scheme.…”

“…By jointly optimizing the allocated power to the PLC and VLC links, NOMA performs better than OMA in terms of sum throughput. The aforementioned works [19][20][21] have only considered DF relaying with NOMA in cooperative PLC systems.…”