Energy Efficiency Analysis of FSO Backhauled Uplink NOMA System

Free space optical (FSO) communication system is a groundbreaking technology in the field of communication systems. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), on the other hand, currently being used in fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems, is a powerful technique for establishing communication for multiple users using the same time and frequency resources. In this paper, the performances of NOMA and orthogonal multiple access (OMA) in an FSO-based communication system are studied. In the FSO communication system, two base station units are considered to be connected to a central unit for FSO backhauling using an uplink-fixed NOMA scheme. Bit error rate (BER), ergodic capacity, and energy efficiency (EE) performances of the NOMA-based FSO system are studied and compared with an OMA-based FSO system. It is found that the NOMA-based system provides approximately 10% of the ergodic capacity gain and increases EE by 37%-60% for a given BER compared to the OMA-based system.