On the performance of SIC-free spatial modulation aided uplink NOMA under imperfect CSI

In this paper, a spatial modulation aided uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (SM-NOMA) without successive interference cancellation (SIC) is proposed. The SIC-free SM-NOMA system is investigated under both perfect and imperfect channel state information (CSI). Moreover, on the receiver side, both SIC-based and SIC-free detection techniques are used to analyze the bit error rate (BER) performance of SM-NOMA. Finally, the performance of SIC-free SM-NOMA is evaluated and compared with the conventional NOMA, and SIC-based SM-NOMA. The results show that the SIC-free SM-NOMA outperforms conventional NOMA in terms of spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, and BER.(c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).