Efficient User Pairing for Performance Enhancement of Downlink NOMA Systems

In this paper, the resource allocation problem for user pairing (UP) in downlink non-orthogonal multiple access ( NOMA) systems is investigated. NOMA allows the use of one subcarrier for more than one user at the same time, thus increases the total capacity of the wireless communication system. However, users pairing is a challenging task in the NOMA systems, because a good channel quality subcarrier should be selected and allocated for the user to enhance the performance of NOMA systems. The proposed UP algorithm aims to enhance the sum rate of the paired users per subcarrier and consequently enhance the total sum rate of downlink NOMA systems. Moreover, the proposed UP algorithm target to improve the fairness of the users. The proposed UP algorithm is based on a simple search for the subcarrier with the minimum average channel gains to be assigned its paired users and then excluding it from the next searching process. The proposed scheme ensures the higher channel gain for users by giving the priority to the subcarrier with the minimum average channel gains during the user pairing process. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed UP algorithm can not only enhance the total sum rate compared with the random UP and conventional UP but also can enhance the fairness of the users. Moreover, it is clearly seen that the proposed UP algorithm provides the lowest outage probability.