Performance Analysis of NOMA in Training-Based Multiuser MIMO Systems

This paper considers the use of non-orthogonal-multiple-access (NOMA) in multiuser MIMO systems in practical scenarios where channel state information (CSI) is acquired through pilot signaling. A new NOMA scheme that uses shared pilots is proposed. Achievable rate analysis is carried out for different pilot signaling schemes, including both uplink and downlink pilots. The achievable rate performance of the proposed NOMA scheme with shared pilot within each group is compared with the traditional orthogonal access scheme with orthogonal pilots. Our proposed scheme is a generalization of the orthogonal scheme, and can be reduced to the orthogonal scheme when appropriate power allocation parameters are chosen. Numerical results show that when downlink CSI is available at the users, our proposed NOMA scheme outperforms orthogonal schemes. However with more groups of users present in the cell, it is preferable to use multi-user beamforming instead of NOMA.