Delay-Aware Resource Allocation for RIS Assisted Semi-Grant-Free NOMA Systems

A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted semi-grant-free (SGF) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system is investigated. Unlike existing works that only focus on short-term resource allocation, we study a long-term power-saving optimization problem under queue stability constraints and utilize Lyapunov stability theory to deal with delay-aware resource allocation. We first transform the long-term problem into a series of per-time-slot problems by exploiting the Lyapunov theory. Then, the objective function is minimized by alternatingly optimizing the power allocation, channel assignment, and RIS reflection coefficients. In particular, the channel assignment subproblem is solved by invoking a many-to-one matching algorithm. The power allocation sub-problem is addressed by the developed fractional programming algorithm. The reflection coefficients design sub-problem is solved by a penalty-based method, which tackles the rank one constraint and optimizes reflection coefficients. The numerical results validate the effectiveness and show that it can achieve queue stability by setting the Lyapunov parameters. It also shows that the proposed RIS-assisted SGF NOMA system outperforms without RIS and random RIS phase-shift baselines.