Joint power control and user grouping for uplink power domain non-orthogonal multiple access

Orthogonal multiple access schemes based on assignment of communication resource blocks among multiple contenders, although widely available, still necessitate an upper limit on the number of concurrent users for minimization of multiple-user interference. The feature thwarts efforts to cater for pressing connectivity demands posed by modern-day cellular communication networks. Non-orthogonal multiple access, regarded as a key advancement towards realization of high-speed 5G wireless communication networks, enables multiple users to access the same set of resource blocks non-orthogonally in terms of power with controllable interference, thereby allowing for overall performance enhancement. Owing to the combinatorial nature of the underlying optimization problem involving user pairing/grouping scheme, power control and decoding order, the computational complexity in determining optimal and sub-optimal solutions remains considerably high. This work proposes three novel alternative approaches (Randomly, 2-Opt and Hybrid) for arriving at a near-optimal solution for the problem of user pairing/grouping. The algorithms not only offer reduced computational complexity but also outperform orthogonal multiple access and existing schemes reported in the literature for uplink non-orthogonal multiple access systems.